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 HEEEWAPiD THE WAKE 
 
 'LAST OF THE ENGLISH'
 
 HEKEAVAED THE WAKE 
 
 LAST OF THE ENGLISH' 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES J^INGSLEY 
 
 iLontion 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 1889 
 
 A II rights rescn'Cii
 
 First Edition (2 vols. Crown 8vo) 18(36. 
 
 Nevj Edition (1 vol Crown Svo) 1873. Reprinted 1874, 1875, January and December, 
 
 1883, 1884, 1880, 1887. 
 
 Neiu Edition (1 vol. Crown Svo) 1889. 
 
 Eversley Edition (2 vols. Globe Svo) 1881. 
 
 Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh.
 
 TO THOMAS WEIGHT, Esq., F.S.A., etc. etc. 
 
 My dear Weight, 
 
 Thus does Hereward, the hero of your youth, 
 reappear at last in a guise fitted for a modern drawing-room. 
 To you is due whatever new renown he may win for himself 
 in that new field. You first disinterred him, long ago, when 
 scarcely a hand or foot of him was left standing out from 
 beneath the dust of ages. You taught me, since then, how 
 to furbish his rusty harness, botch his bursten saddle, and send 
 him forth once more, upon the ghost of his gallant mare. 
 Truly he should feel obliged to you ; and though we cannot 
 believe that the last infirmity of noble minds endures beyond 
 the grave, or that any touch of his old vanity still stains the 
 spirit of the mighty Wake ; yet we will please ourselves — 
 Avhy should we not ? — with the fancy that he is as grateful to 
 you as I am this day. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 C. KINGSLEY.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PACE 
 
 Prelude— Of the Fens 1 
 
 I. How Hekeward was Outlawed, and went North 
 
 TO seek his Fortunes 14 
 
 II. How Hereward slew the Bear 40 
 
 III. How Hereward succoured a Princess of Cornwall 52 
 
 IV. How Hereward took Service with Ranald, King 
 
 OF Waterford G7 
 
 \, How Hereward succoured the Princess of Corn- 
 wall a Second Time 77 
 
 YI. How Hereward was wrecked upon the Flanders 
 
 Shore 82 
 
 VII. How Hereward went to the AVar at Guisnes . 94 
 A^'III. How A Fair Lady exercised the Mechanical Art 
 
 TO WIN Hereward's Love 99 
 
 IX. How Hereward went to the War in Scaldmariland 103 
 
 X. How Hereward won the Magic Armour . . . 109 
 
 XI. How the Hollanders took Hereward for a Magician 119 
 
 XII. How Hereward turned Berserker . . . 119 
 
 XIII. How Hereward won Mare Swallow . . . 124 
 
 XIV. How Hereward rode into Bruges like a Beggarman 130 
 XV. How Earl Tosti Godwinsson came to St. Omer . 134 
 
 XVI. How Hereward was asked to slay an Old Comrade 142 
 XVII. How Hereward took the News from Stanford 
 
 Brigg and Hastings 149 
 
 XVIII. How Earl Godwin's Widow came to St. Omer . 157 
 
 XIX. How Hereward cleared Bourne of Frenchmen . 109 
 XX. How Hei;eward was made a Knight after the 
 
 Fashion of the English 180
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 XXI. How Ivo Taillebois marched out of Spalding 
 
 Town 191 
 
 XXII. How Hereward sailed for England once and 
 
 FOR all 197 
 
 XXIII. How Hereward gathered an Army . . . 202 
 
 XXIV. How Archbishop Aldred died of Sorrow . . 216 
 XXV. How Hereward found a Wiser Man in England 
 
 THAN Himself 219 
 
 XXVI. How Hereward fulfilled his "Words to the 
 
 Prior of the Golden Borough .... 227 
 XXVII. How they held a Great Meeting in the Hall 
 
 of Ely 244 
 
 XXVIII. How they fought at Aldeeth .... 248 
 
 XXIX. How Sir Deda brought News from Ely . . 253 
 XXX. How Hereward played the Potter ; and how 
 
 he cheated the King 258 
 
 XXXI. How THEY fought AGAIN AT AlDRETH . . . 272 
 
 XXXII. How King William took Counsel of a Churchman 278 
 
 XXXIII. How THE Monks of Ely did after their Kind . 290 
 
 XXXIV. How Hereward went to the Greenwood . . 299 
 XXXV. How Abbot Thorold was put to Ransom . . 307 
 
 XXXVI. How Alftruda wrote to Hereward . . .316 
 XXXVII. How Hereward lost Sword Brainbiter . . 334 
 XXXVIII. How Hereward came in to the King . . .337 
 XXXIX. How Torfrida confessed that she had been in- 
 spired by the Devil 341 
 
 XL. How Earl Waltheof was made a Saint . . 353 
 
 XLI. How Hereward began to get his Soul's Price . 356 
 
 XLII. How Deeping Fen was drained . . . .370
 
 HEKEWARD THE WAKE 
 
 'LAST OF THE ENGLISH' 
 
 PRELUDE 
 
 OF THE FENS 
 
 The heroic deeds of highlanders, both in these islands and 
 elsewhere, have been told in verse and prose, and not more 
 often, nor more loudly, than they deserve. But we must remem- 
 ber, now and then, that there have been heroes likewise in the 
 lowland and in the fen. Why, however, poets have so seldom 
 sung of them ; why no historian, save Mr. Motley in his Eise 
 of the Dutch Republic, has condescended to tell the tale of their 
 doughty deeds, is a question not difficult to answer. 
 
 In the first place, they have been fewer in number. The 
 lowlands of the world, being the richest spots, have been gener- 
 ally the soonest conquered, the soonest civilised, and therefore 
 the soonest taken out of the sphere of romance and wild adven- 
 ture into that of order and law, hard work and common sense, 
 as well as — too often — into the sphere of slavery, cowardice, 
 luxury, and ignoble greed. The lowland iDoiDulations, for the 
 same reasons, have been generally the first to deteriorate, 
 though not on account of the vices of civilisation. The vices of 
 incivilisation are far worse, and far more destructive of human 
 life ; and it is just because they are so, that rude tribes deterio- 
 rate physically less tlian polished nations. In the savage 
 struggle for life, none but tlie strongest, healthiest, cunningest, 
 have a chance of living, prospering, and propagating their race. 
 In the civilised state, on the contrary, the weakliest and the 
 silliest, protected by law, religion, and humanity, have theii- 
 chance likewise, and transmit to their offspring their own 
 weakliness or silliness. In these islands, for instance, at the 
 time of tlie Norman Conquest, the average of man was doubt- 
 less superior, l)oth in ])ody and mind, to tlie average of man 
 now, simply because the weaklings could not have lived at all; 
 B ^ H. T. w.
 
 2 HEREWARD THE WAKE 
 
 and the rich and delicate beauty, in which the women of the 
 Eastern Counties still surpass all other I'aces in these isles, was 
 doubtless far more common in proportion to the numbers of the 
 population. 
 
 Another reason why lowland heroes ' carent vate sacro,' is 
 that the lowlands and those who live in them are wanting in 
 the poetic and romantic elements. There is in the lowland none 
 of that background of the unknown, fantastic, magical, terrible, 
 perpetually feeding curiosity and wonder, which still remains 
 in the Scottish highlands ; and which, when it disappears from 
 thence, will remain embalmed for ever in the pages of Walter 
 Scott. Against that half -magical background his heroes stand 
 out in vivid relief ; and justly so. It was not put there by him 
 for stage purposes ; it was there as a fact ; and the men of 
 whom he wrote were conscious of it, were moulded by it, were 
 not ashamed of its influence. For nature among the mountains 
 is too fierce, too strong for man. He cannot conquer her, and 
 she awes him. He cannot dig down the clifTs, or chain the 
 storm - blasts ; and his fear of them takes bodily shape: he 
 begins to people the weird places of the earth with weird 
 beings, and sees nixes in the dark linns as he fishes by night, 
 dwarfs in the caves where he digs, half-trembling, morsels of 
 iron and copper for his weapons, witches and demons on the 
 snow-blast which overwhelms his herd and his hut, and in the 
 dark clouds which brood on the untrodden mountain peak. He 
 lives in fear : and yet, if he be a valiant-hearted man,_ his fears 
 do him little harm. They may break out, at times, in witch- 
 manias, with all their horrible suspicions, and thus breed 
 cruelty, which is the child of fear : but on the whole they rather 
 produce in man thoughtfulness, reverence, a sense, confused yet 
 precious, of the boundless importance of the unseen world._ His 
 superstitions develop his imagination ; the moving accidents 
 of a wild life call out in him sympathy and pathos ; and the 
 mountaineer becomes instinctively a poet. 
 
 The lowlander, on the other hand, has his own strength, his 
 own 'virtues,' or manfulnesses, in the good old sense of the 
 word : iDut they are not for the most part picturesque, or even 
 poetical. 
 
 He finds out, soon enough for his weal and his bane, that he 
 is stronger than nature : and right tyrannously and irreverently 
 he lords it over her, clearing, delving, dyking, building, without 
 fear or shame. He knows of no natural force greater than 
 himself, save an occasional thunderstorm ; and against that, 
 as he grows more cunning, he insures his crops. Why should 
 he reverence nature ? Let him use her, and live by her. One 
 cannot blame him. Man was sent into the world (so saysthe 
 Scripture) to fill and subdue the earth. But he was sent into 
 the world for other purposes also, which the lowlander is but 
 too apt to forget. With the awe of nature, the awe of the
 
 OF THE FENS 3 
 
 unseen dies out in him. IMeeting with no visible superior, he is 
 apt to become not merely unpoetical and irreverent, but some- 
 what of a sensualist and an atheist. The sense of the beautiful 
 dies out in him moi^e and more. He has little* or nothing 
 around him to refine or lift up his soul • and unless he meet 
 with a religion, and with a civilisation which can deliver him, 
 he may sink into that dull brutality which is too common 
 among the lowest classes of the English lowlands ; and remain 
 for generations gifted with the strength and industry of the ox, 
 and with the courage of the lion, but, alas ! with the intellect 
 of the former and the self-restraint of the latter. 
 
 Nevertheless, there may be a period in the history of a 
 lowland race when they, too, become historic for a while. 
 There was such a period for the men of the Eastern and 
 Central Counties ; for they proved it by their deeds. 
 
 When the men of Wessex, the once conquering, and even to 
 the last the most civilised, race of Britain, fell at Hastings once 
 and for all, and struck no second blow, then the men of the 
 Danelagh disdained to yield to the Norman invader. For seven 
 long years they held their own, not knowing, like true English- 
 men, when they were beaten ; and fought on desperate, till 
 there were none left to fight. Their bones lay white on every 
 island in the fens ; their corpses rotted on gallows beneath every 
 Norman keep ; their few survivors crawled into monasteries, 
 with eyes picked out, hands and feet cut ofi"; or took to the 
 wild wood as strong outlaws, like their successors and repre- 
 sentatives, Robin Hood, Scarlet, and Little John ; Adam Bell, 
 and Clym of the Cleugh, and William of Cloudeslee. But they 
 never really bent their necks to the Norman yoke : they kept 
 alive in their hearts that proud spirit of personal independence 
 which they brought with them from the moors of Denmark and 
 the dales of Norway ; and they kejit alive, too, though in 
 abeyance for awhile, those free institutions which were without 
 a doubt the germs of our British liberty. 
 
 They were a changed folk since first they settled in that 
 Danelagh : — since first in the days of King Beorhtric, ' in the 
 year 787, three ships of Northmen came from Hjeretha land, 
 and the king's reeve rode to the place, and would have driven 
 them up to the king's town, for he knew not what men they 
 were : but they slew him there and then • ' and after that the 
 Saxons and Angles began to find out to their bitter bale what 
 men they were, those fierce Vikings out of the dark north-east. 
 
 But they had long ceased to burn farms, sack convents, 
 torture monks for gold, and slay every human being they met, 
 in mere Berserker lust of blood. No Barnakill could now earn 
 his nickname by entreating his comrades, as they tossed the 
 children on their spear-points, to ' Na kill the barns. Gradually 
 they had settled down on the land, intermarried with the Angles 
 and Saxons, and colonised all England north and east of Watling
 
 4 HEREWARD THE WAKE 
 
 Street (a rough line from London to Chester), as far as the Tees."^ 
 Gradually they had deserted Thor and Odin for 'the White 
 Christ ' ; had their own priests and bishops, and built their own 
 minsters. The convents whicli tlie fathers had destroyed, the 
 sons, or at least the grandsons, r-ebuilt ; and often, casting away 
 sword and axe, they entered them as monks themselves ; and 
 Peterborougli, Ely, and above all Crowland, destroyed by them 
 in Alfred's time with a horrible destruction, had become their 
 holy places, where they decked the altars with gold and jewels, 
 with silks from the far East, and furs from the far North ; and 
 where, as in sacred fortresses, they, and the liberty of England 
 with them, made their last unavailing stand. 
 
 For awhile they had been lords of all England. The Anglo- 
 Saxon race was wearing out. The men of Wessex, priest-ridden, 
 and enslaved by their own aristocracy, quailed before the free 
 Noi'semen, among whom was not a single serf. The God- 
 descended line of Cerdic and Alfred was exhausted. Vain, in- 
 capable, profligate kings, the tools of such prelates as Odo and 
 Dunstan, were no match for such wild heroes as Thorkill the 
 Tall, or Olaf Trygvasson, or Swend Forkbeard. The Danes had 
 gradually seized not only their own Danelagh and Northumbria, 
 but great part of Wessex. Vast sums of Danegelt were yearly 
 sent out of the country to buy oft' the fresh invasions which were 
 perpetually threatened. Then Ethelred the Unready, or rather 
 Evil-counsel, advised himself to fulfll his name, and the curse 
 which Dunstan had joronounced against him at the baptismal 
 font. By his counsel the men of Wessex rose against the unsus- 
 pecting Danes ; and on St. Brice's Eve, A.D. 1002, murdered them 
 all, or nearly all, man, woman, and child. It may be that they 
 only did to the children as the fathers had done to them ; but 
 
 ^ For the distribution of Danisli and Norwegian names in England, and 
 the prevalence, north of the Danelagh, from Tees to Forth, of names 
 neither Scandinavian nor Celtic, but purely Anglo-Saxon, consult the 
 Rev. Isaac Taylor's book, Words and Places. Bear in mind, meanwhile, 
 that these names represent for the most part, if not altogether, the Danish 
 and Norse settlement at the end of the ninth century : but that this 
 Scandinavian element was further strengthened by the free men who con- 
 quere(l England under Sweyn and Canute, at the beginning of the 
 eleventh century. These men seem to have become not so much settlers 
 of great lands as an intrusive military aristocracy, who gave few or no 
 names to estates, but amalgamated tliemselves rapidly by marriage with 
 the remnants of that English nobility whicli was destroyed at the battle 
 of Assingdon. This fact explains the number of purely Anglo-Saxon 
 names to be met with among Hereward's companions. Some of them, 
 like ' Goderic of Corby,' themselves with Enghsh names, held manors with 
 Danish ones, even in that part of Lincolnshire where the Scandinavian 
 element was strongest. In fact the aristocracies and the two races had 
 been thoroughly amalgamated, not merely in the Danelagh, but over the 
 greater part of England, and must be called, as in the case of King Harold 
 Godwinsson, neither Saxons nor Anglo-Saxons, but rather Anglo-Danes.
 
 OF THE FENS 5 
 
 the deed was ' woi^se than a crime ; it was a mistake.' The 
 Danes of the Danelagh and Northumbria, their brothers of 
 Denmark and Norway, the Orkneys and the east coast of Ire- 
 land, remained unharmed. A mighty host of Vikings poured 
 from thence into England the very next year, under Swend 
 Forkbeard and the great Canute ; and after thirteen fearful 
 campaigns came the great battle of Assingdon in Essex, where 
 ' Canute had the victory ; and all the English nation fought 
 against him ; and all the nobility of the English race was there 
 destroyed.' 
 
 That same year saw the mysterious death of Edmund Iron- 
 side, the last man of Cerdic's race worthy of the name. For the 
 next twenty-five years Danish kings ruled from the Forth to 
 the Land's End. 
 
 A noble figure he was, that great and wise Canute, the friend 
 of the famous Godiva, and Leofric, Godiva's husband, and 
 Godwin Ulfnothsson, and Siward Digre ; trying to expiate by 
 justice and mercy the dark deeds of his bloodstained youth ; 
 trying (and not in vain) to blend the two races over which he 
 ruled ; rebuilding the churches and monasteries which his father 
 had destroyed ; bringing back in state to Canterbury the body 
 of Archbishop Elphege — not unjustly called by the Saxons 
 martyr and saint — wliom Tall Thorkill's men had murdered 
 with beef bones and ox skulls, because he would not give up to 
 them the money destined for God's poor ; rebuking, as every 
 child has heard, his housecarles' flattery by setting his chair on 
 the brink of the rising tide ; and then laying his golden crown, 
 in token of humility, on the high altar of Winchester, never to 
 wear it more. In Winchester lie his bones unto this day, or 
 what of them the civil wars have left ; and by them lie tlie bones 
 of his son Hardicanute, in whom, as in his half-brother Harold 
 Harefoot before him, the Danish power fell to swift decay, by 
 insolence and drink and civil war ; while with the Danish power 
 England fell to pieces likewise. 
 
 Canute had divided England into four great earldoms, each 
 ruled, under him, by a jarl, or earl, a Danish, not a Saxon 
 title. 
 
 ^t his death in 1036 the earldoms of Northumbria and East 
 Anglia — the more strictly Danish parts — were held by a true 
 Danish hero, Siward Biorn, alias Digre, 'tlie Stout,' conqueror 
 of Macbeth and son of the Fairy Bear ; proving his descent, men 
 said, by his pointed and hairy ears. 
 
 Mercia, the great central plateau of England, was held by 
 Earl Leofric, husband of tlie famous Lady Godiva. 
 
 Wessex, wliich Canute had at first kept in liis own hands, 
 had passed into those of the famous Earl Godwin, tlie then 
 ablest man in England. Possessed of boundless tact and 
 cunning, gifted witli an eloquence which seems from tlie 
 accounts reiuaiuiug of it to have been rather that of a Greek
 
 6 HEREWARD THE WAKE 
 
 than an Englishman, and married to Canute's niece/ he was 
 fitted, alike by fortunes and by talents, to be the king-maker 
 which he became. 
 
 Such a system may have worked well as long as the brain of 
 a hero was there to overlook it all. But when that brain was 
 turned to dust, the history of England became, till the Norman 
 Conquest, little more than the history of the rivalries of the two 
 great houses of Godwin and Leofric. 
 
 Leofric had the first success in king-making. He, though 
 bearing a Saxon name, seems to have been the champion of the 
 Danish party, and of Canute's son, or reputed son, Harold 
 Harefoot ; and he succeeded, by the help of the thanes north of 
 Thames, and the lithsmen of London, which city was more than 
 half Danish in those days, in setting his puppet on the throne. 
 But the blood of Canute had exhausted itself. Within seven 
 years Harold Harefoot, and Hardicanute, who succeeded him, 
 had died as foully as they lived • and Godwin's turn had come. 
 
 He, though married to a Danish princess, and acknowledging 
 his Danish connection by the Norse names which were borne by 
 his three most famous sons, Harold, Sweyn, and Tostig, consti- 
 tuted himself (with a sound patriotic instinct) the champion of 
 the men of Wessex and the house of Cerdic. He had probably 
 caused, or at least allowed, to be murdered, Alfred the Etheling, 
 King Ethelred's son and heir-apparent, when he was supporting 
 the claims of Hardicanute against Harefoot ; he now tried to 
 atone for that crime (if indeed he actually committed it) by 
 placing Alfred's younger brother on the throne, to become at 
 once his king, his son-in-law, and his puppet. 
 
 It had been well, perhaps, for England, had Godwin's power 
 over Edward been even more complete than it actually was. 
 The ' Confessor ' was, if we are to believe the monks, unmixed 
 virtue and piety, meekness and magnanimity ; a model ruler of 
 men. No wonder, therefore, that (according to William of 
 Malmesbury) the happiness of his times (famed as he was both 
 for miracles and the spirit of prophecy) was revealed in a dream 
 to Brithwin, bishop of Wilton, who made it public ; for meditat- 
 ing in King Canute's time on the near extinction of the royal 
 race of the English, he was rapt up on high, and saw St. Peter 
 consecrating Edward king. 'His chaste life also was pointed 
 out, and the exact period of his reign (twenty-four years) deter- 
 
 ^ The ArcJueological Journal, in vol. xi. and vol. xii., contains two ex- 
 cellent articles on the Life and Death of Earl Godmn, from the pen of 
 that able antiqiiary, E. A. Freeman, Esq. By him the facts of Godwin's 
 life have been more carefully investigated, and his character more fully 
 judged, than by any author of whom I am aware ; and I am the more 
 bound to draw attention to these articles, because, some years since, I had 
 a little paper controversy with Mr. Freeman on this very subject. I have 
 now the pleasure of saying that he has proved himself to have been in the 
 right, while I was in the wrong.
 
 OF THE FENS 7 
 
 mined ; and when he inquired about his posterity, it was 
 answered, "The kingdom of the English belongs to God. 
 After Edward, He will provide a king according to His 
 pleasure.'" But the conduct which earned him the title 
 of Confessor was the direct cause of the Norman Conquest 
 and the ruin of his people ; while those who look at facts will 
 see in the holy king's character little but what is pitiable ; and 
 in his reign little but what is tragical. 
 
 Civil wars, invasions, outlawry of Godwin and his sons by 
 the Danish and French parties ; then of Alfgar, Leofric's son, by 
 the Saxon party ; the outlaws on either side attacking and 
 plundering the English shores by the help of Norsemen, Welsh- 
 men, Irish, and Danes — any mercenaries who could be got 
 together ; and then — ' In the same year Bishop Aldred conse- 
 crated the minster at Gloucester to the gloiy of God and of St. 
 Peter, and then went to Jerusalem with such siDlendour as no 
 man had displayed before him ; ' and so forth. The sum and 
 substance of what was done in those ' happy times ' may be well 
 described in the words of the Anglo-Saxon chronicler for the 
 year 1058. ' This year Alfgar the earl was banished : but he 
 came in again with violence, through aid of Griffin (the king of 
 North Wales, his brother-in-law). And this year came a fleet 
 from Norway. It is tedious to tell how these matters went.' 
 
 These were the normal phenomena of a reign which seemed 
 
 to the eyes of chroniclers a holy and a happy one ; because the 
 king refused, whether from spite or superstition, to leave an heir 
 to the house of Cerdic, and spent his time between prayer, hunt- 
 ing, the seeing of fancied visions, the uttering of fancied pro- 
 phecies, and the performance of fancied miracles. 
 
 But there were excuses for him. An Englishman only in 
 name, a Norman, not only by his mother's descent (she was 
 aunt of William the Conqueror), but by his early education on 
 the Continent, he loved the Norman better than the English- 
 man : Norman knights and clerks filled his court, and often the 
 high dignities of his provinces, and returned as often as they 
 were expelled ; the Norman-French language became fashion- 
 able ; Norman customs and manners the signs of civilisation ; 
 and thus all was preparing steadily for the great catastrophe, 
 by which, within a year of Edward's death, the Norman became 
 master of the land. 
 
 We have gained, doubtless, by tliat calamity. By it England 
 and Scotland, and in due time Ireland, became integral parts of 
 the comity of Christendom, and partakers of that classic civilis- 
 ation and learning, tlie fount whereof, for good or for evil, was 
 Rome and the pope of Eome : but the method was at least 
 wicked ; the actors in it tyrannous, brutal, treacherou.s, hypo- 
 critical : and to say tliat so it must have been ; that by no other 
 method could the result (or some far better result) have been 
 obtained — is it not to say that men's crimes are not merely over-
 
 8 HEREWARD THE WAKE 
 
 ruled by, but necessary to, the gracious designs of Providence ; 
 and that — to speak plainly — the Deity has made this world 
 so ill, that He is forced at times to do ill that good may come ? 
 
 Against the new tyranny the freemen of the Danelagh and 
 of Northumbria rose. If Edward the descendant of Cerdic had 
 been little to them, William the descendant of Rollo was still 
 less. That French-speaking knights should expel them fi'om 
 their homes, French-chanting monks from their convents, be- 
 cause Edward had promised the crown of England to William, 
 his foreign cousin ; or because Harold Godwinsson of Wessex 
 had sworn on the relics of all the saints to be William's man ; 
 was contrary to their common sense of right and reason. 
 
 So they rose, and fought ; too late, it may be, and without 
 unity or purpose ; and they were worsted by an enemy who had 
 both unity and purpose ; wliom superstition, greed, and feudal 
 discipline kept together, at least in England, in one compact 
 body of unscrupulous and terrible confederates. 
 
 And theirs was a land worth fighting for — a good land and 
 large : from Humber movith inland to the Trent and merry 
 Sherwood, across to Chester and the Dee, round by 'Leicester 
 and the five burghs of the Danes ; eastward again to Hunting- 
 don and Cambridge (then a poor village on the site of an old 
 Roman town) ; and then northward again into the wide fens, 
 the land of the Girvii, wliere the great central plateau of England 
 slides into the sea, to form, from the rain and river washings of 
 eight shires, lowlands of a fertility inexhaustible, because ever- 
 growing to this day. 
 
 Into those fens, as into a natural fortress, the Anglo-Danish 
 noblemen crowded down instinctively from the inland, to make 
 their last stand against the French. Children of the old Vikings, 
 or ' Creekers,' they took, in their great need, to the seaward 
 and the estuaries, as other conquered races take to the moun- 
 tains, and died, like their forefathers, within scent of the salt 
 sea from whence they came. 
 
 They have a beauty of tlieir own, these great fens, even now, 
 when they are dyked and drained, tilled and fenced — a beauty 
 as of the sea, of boundless expanse and freedom. Much more 
 had tliey that beauty eight hundred years ago, when they were 
 still, for the most part, as God had made them, or rather was 
 making them even then. The low rolling u^^lands were clothed 
 in primeval forest ; oak and ash, beech and elm, with here and 
 there perhaps a group of ancient pines, ragged and decayed, 
 and fast dying out in England even then ; though lingering still 
 in the forests of the Scotch highlands. 
 
 Between the forests were open wolds, dotted with white sheep 
 and golden gorse ; rolling plains of rich though ragged turf, 
 whether cleared by the hand of man or by the wild fires which 
 often swept over the hills. And between the wood and the 
 wold stood many a Danish 'town,' with its clusters of low
 
 OF THE FENS 9 
 
 straggling buildings round the holder's house, of stone or mud 
 below, and of wood above ; its high dykes round tiny fields ; its 
 flocks of sheep ranging on the wold ; its herds of swine in the 
 forest ; and below — a more pi"ecious possession still— its herds of 
 mares and colts, which fed with the cattle and the geese in the 
 rich grass-fen. 
 
 For always, from the foot of the wolds, the gi'een flat stretclied 
 away, illimitable, to an horizon where, from the roundness of 
 the earth, the distant trees and islands were hulled down like 
 ships at sea. The firm horse-fen lay, bright green, along the 
 foot of the wold ; beyond it, the browner peat, or deep fen ; and, 
 among that, dark velvet alder beds, long lines of reed-rond, 
 emerald in sjDring, and golden under the autumn sun ; shining 
 ' eas,' or river-reaches ; broad meres dotted witli a million fowl, 
 while the cattle waded along their edges after the rich sedge- 
 grass, or wallowed in the mire through the hot summer's day. 
 Here and there, too, upon the far horizon, rose a tall line of 
 ashen trees, marking some island of firm rich soil. In some of 
 them, as at Ramsey and Crowland, the huge ashes had disap- 
 peared before the axes of the monks ; and a minster tower rose 
 over the fen, amid orcliards, gardens, cornfields, pastures, with 
 here and there a ti'ee left standing for shade. ' Painted with 
 flowers in the spring,' with ' pleasant shores embosomed in still 
 lakes,' as the monk-chronicler of Eamsey has it, those islands 
 seemed to such as the monk terrestrial paradises. 
 
 Overhead tlie arch of heaven spread more ample than else- 
 where, as over the open sea ; and that vastness gave, and still 
 gives, such cloudlands, such sunrises, such sunsets, as can be 
 seen nowhere else within these isles. They might well have 
 been star worshippers, those Girvii, had their sky been as clear 
 as that of the East : but they were like to have worshipped the 
 clouds rather than the stars, according to tlie too universal law, 
 that mankind worship tlie powers which do them harm, rather 
 than the powers which do them good. Their priestly teacliers, 
 too, had darkened still further their notion of the world around, 
 as accursed by sin, and swarming with evil spirits. The gods 
 and fairies of tlieir old mythology had been transformed by the 
 Church into fiends, alluring or loathsome, but all alike destruc- 
 tive to man, against whom the soldier of God, the celibate 
 monk, fought day and night with relics, Agnus Dei, and sign of 
 Holy Cross. 
 
 And therefore the Danelagh men, who feared not mortal 
 sword or axe, feared witches, ghosts. Pucks, AVills-o'-the-Wisp, 
 Werewolves, spirits of the wells and of the trees, and all dark, 
 capricious, and harmful beings whom their fancy conjured up 
 out of tlie wild, wet, and unwholesome marslics, or the dark 
 wolf-haunted woods. For that fair land, like all things on 
 earth, had its darker aspect. The foul exhalations of autumn 
 called up fever and ague, crippling and enervating, and tempt-
 
 10 HEREWARD THE WAKE 
 
 ing, almost compelling, to that wild and desperate drinking 
 which was the Scandinavian's special sin. Dark and sad were 
 those short autumn days, when all the distances were shut off, 
 and the air choked with foul brown fog and drenching rains 
 from off the eastern sea ; and pleasant the bursting forth of the 
 keen north-east wind, with all its whirling snowstorms. For 
 though it sent men hurrying out into the storm, to drive the 
 cattle in from the fen, and lift the sheep out of the snow-wreaths, 
 and now and then never to return, lost in mist and mire, in ice 
 and snow ; — yet all knew that after the snow would come the 
 keen frost and bright sun and cloudless blue sky, and the fen- 
 man's yearly holiday, when, work being impossible, all gave 
 themselves up to play, and swarmed upon the ice on skates and 
 sledges, to run races, township against township, or visit old 
 friends full forty miles away ; and met everywhere faces as 
 bright and ruddy as their own, cheered by the keen wine of that 
 dry and bracing frost. 
 
 Such was the Fenland ; hard, yet cheerful ; rearing a race of 
 hard and cheerful men ; showing their power in old times in 
 valiant fighting, and for many a century since in that valiant 
 industry which has drained and embanked the land of the 
 Girvii, till it has become a very Garden of the Lord. And the 
 highlander who may look from the promontory of Peterborough, 
 the ' golden boi'ough ' of old time • or from that Witham on the 
 Hill, which once was a farm of Hereward the Wake's ; or from 
 the tower of Crowland, while he and Torfrida sleep in the 
 ruined nave beneath ; or from the heights of that Isle of Ely 
 which was so long the camp of refuge for English freedom ; 
 over the labyrinth of dykes and lodes, the squares of rich corn 
 and verdure, — will confess that the lowlands, as well as the 
 highlands, can at times breed gallant men. 
 
 Most gallant of them all, and their leader in the fatal struggle 
 against William, was Hereward the Wake, Lord of Bourne, and 
 ancestor of that family of Wake, the arms of whom appear on 
 the cover of this book. These, of course, are much later than 
 the time of Hereward. Not so, probably, the badge of the 
 ' Wake Knot,' in which (according to tradition) two monks' 
 girdles are worked into the form of the letter W. It, and the 
 motto ' Vigila et ora,' may well have been used by Hereward 
 himself. I owe them (as I do numberless details and correc- 
 tions) to the exceeding courtesy of that excellent antiquary, the 
 Rev. E. Trollope, of Leasingham, in those parts. 
 
 Hereward's pedigree is a matter of no importance, save to a 
 few antiquaries, and possibly to his descendants, the ancient 
 and honourable house of the Wakes. But as I have, in this 
 story, followed facts as strictly as I could, altering none which 
 I found, and inventing little more than was needed to give the 
 story coherence, or to illustrate the manners of the time, I owe
 
 OF THE FENS 11 
 
 it to myself to give my reason for believing Hereward to have 
 been the son of Earl Leofric and Godiva, a belief in which I am 
 supported, as far as I know, only by Sir Henry Ellis (Introduc- 
 tion to Domesday) and by Mr. Thomas Wright. The reasons 
 against my belief (well known to antiquaries) are these — Richard 
 of Ely calls him simply the son of Leofric, Lord of Brunne, and 
 of iEdiva ; and his MS. is by far the most important document 
 relating to Hereward. But he says that the older MSS. which 
 he consulted were so ruined by damp, and torn, that ' vix es eis 
 principium a genitoribus ejus inceptum, et pauca interim ex- 
 pressimus, et nomen ; ' in fact that he had much difficulty in 
 making out Herewai'd's pedigree. He says, moreover, as_ to 
 Leofric the Mass Priest's Anglo-Saxon MSS., ' In quibus (Anglicae 
 literse) vero non licet non satis periti aut potius exarare deleta 
 incognitarum literarum ' — which passage (whatever may have 
 been the word now wanting to complete it) certainly confesses 
 that he was but a poor adept at deciphering Anglo-Saxon MSS. 
 He need hardly have confessed as much ; for the misspellings of 
 English names in his work are more gross than even those in 
 Domesday; and it is not improbable that among the rest he 
 may have rendered Godiva, or its English equivalent, by 
 ^Ediva. 
 
 That he should have been ignorant that Leofric was not 
 merely Lord of Bourne, but Earl of Mercia, will not seem sur- 
 prising to those who know how utterly the English nobility 
 were trampled into the mud. To the Normans they were 
 barbarians without a name or a race. They were dead and 
 gone, too ; and who cared for the pedigree of a dead man whose 
 lands had passed to another ? Thus of Marlesweyn nothing is 
 known. Of Edric the Wild, a great chieftain in his day, all but 
 nothing. Gospatric's pedigree has been saved, in part, by his 
 relationship to royalty, both Scotch and English ; and Siward 
 Digre's, like that of Gyda, his kinswoman, by their relationship 
 with the kings of Denmark and the Fairy Bear. But Gyda's 
 husband, the great Earl Godwin, had become within three 
 generations a ' herdsman's son,' and even Mr. Freeman's research 
 and judgment cannot decide his true pedigree. As for Leofric, 
 we know that he was son (according to Florence of Worcester) 
 of Leofwin the Alderman, and had two brothers, one Norman, 
 killed by Canute with Edric Streon 1017 (according to Ingulf) ; 
 the other Edric Edwin, killed by the Welsh 1039. But we know 
 no more. 
 
 That Ingulf sliould make him die A.D. 1057 is not strange, in 
 spite of his many mistakes ; for the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 
 gives the same date. But the monk who, probably a century 
 or more after Ingulf, interpolated from Kichard of Ely the 
 passage beginning, 'At this time a nobleman, the Lord of 
 Bourne, etc' sub anno 1062, may well liave been ignorant that 
 Leofric, Lord of Bourne, was also Earl of Mercia. But what
 
 12' HEREWARD THE WAKE 
 
 need to argue over any statement of the so-called Ingulf, or 
 rather ' Ingullic Cycle ? I shall only add that the passage sub 
 anno 1066, beginning ' Herward, who has been previously men- 
 tioned,' seems to be again by a different hand. 
 
 Meanwhile the Excerptum de Familia Hereivardi calls him 
 plainly the son of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, and the Lady Godiva; 
 giving to her the same genealogy as is given by Richard of Ely 
 to ^Ediva. 
 
 This account of Hereward's family is taken from a document 
 of no greater antiquity than the fifteenth century, a genea- 
 logical roll of the Lords of Bourne and Deeping, who traced 
 their descent and title to the lands from Hereward's daughter : 
 but it was no doubt taken either from previously existing 
 records, or from the old tradition of tlie family ; and, with no 
 authority for contradicting it, and considering its general agree- 
 ment with the other evidence, it is plain that Leofric of Bourne 
 was generally understood to be the great Earl of Mercia of that 
 
 name. t j? • 
 
 But the strongest evidence of the identity between Leofric of 
 Bourne and Leofric, Earl of Mercia, is to be found in Domesday- 
 book. 
 
 The Lord of Bourne at the time of the Conquest, as is proved 
 by the Clamores de Kesteven, was Morcar, Leofric of Mercia's 
 grandson. This one fact is all but conclusive, unless we sup- 
 pose that Leofric of Bourne had been dispossessed of his 
 ' dominium ' by iNIorcar, or by Earl Algar his father, or, again, 
 by Earl Leofric his grandfather. But such an hypothesis 
 accords ill with the amity between Morcar and Hereward ; and 
 it is all but impossible that, if Hereward's family were then 
 dispossessed, the fact should not appear in any of his bio- 
 grapliies. 
 
 But Domesday-book gives no hint of any large landholders 
 in or near Bourne, save Morcar, lord thereof, whose name still 
 lingers in the 'Morkery Woods,' a few miles off; Edwin his 
 brother ; and Algar his father, son of Earl Leofric and Godiva. 
 The famous Godiva, also, was probably a Lincolnshire woman, 
 though the manors which she held in her widowhood were 
 principally in Shropshire. The domains of her ancestor, 'the 
 magnificent Earl Oslac,' who lived in the days of King Edgar, 
 were Deira, i.e. Danish Novthumbria, from Humber to Tees ; 
 and he may have sprung from (as his name hints) the ancient 
 kings of Deira. But charters (as far as we can trust tliem) 
 connect him botli witli Peterborougli and Crowland ; and liis 
 • descendant was Thorold of Bukenhale near Crowland, sheriff of 
 Lincoln, from whom the ancient Thorolds of those parts claim 
 descent ; and this Thorold appears, in a charter of 1061, attested 
 by Leofric and Godiva, as giving the cell of Spalding to Crow- 
 land. The same charter descril^es the manor of Spalding as be- 
 longing to Earl Leofric. His son Algar, whose name remains in
 
 OF THE FENS 13 
 
 Algarkirk/ appears as a benefactor to Crowlancl. And, in fine, 
 the great folk of Bourne, as well as Spalding, were without 
 doubt the family of Leof ric. Earl of Mercia and Chester, and of 
 the Lady Godiva ; the parents, as I conceive, of Hereward. He 
 would thus, on the death of Morcar, son of his elder brother 
 Algar, take possession by natural right of the lordshij) of 
 Bourne, and keep up a special enmity against Ivo Taillebois, 
 who had taken Spalding from his patrimony. 
 
 Lastly, it is dilhcult to me to suppose that Hereward would 
 have been allowed to take the vindisputed command of a rebel- 
 lion so aristocratic as that of the Fens, over the heads of three 
 earls, Morcar among them, had he not possessed some such 
 natural right of birth as an earl's son, and, probably, like most 
 great English earls' families, of ancient royal, and therefore 
 God-descended, blood. 
 
 On the supposition, too, that he was the last remaining heir 
 of the Earls of Mercia, may be explained William's strong desire 
 to spare his life and receive liis homage ; as an atonement for 
 his conduct to Edwin and jNIorcar, and a last effort to attach to 
 himself the ancient English nobility. But of this enough, and 
 more than enough ; and so to my story. 
 
 ^ T!h& first Earl 'Algar,' who signs a charter in the days of Beorrhed, 
 king of the Mercians, and who does doughty deeds about a.d. 870, is, to 
 me, as mythical as the first ' Morcard, Lord of Brune,' who accompanies 
 him ; the first Thorokl of Bukenhale, who gave that place to Crowland 
 about A.D. 806, and the first Leofric, or 'Levric,' Earl of Leicester {i.e. 
 Mercia), who helps to found in Crowland, A.D. 716, a 'monastery of black 
 Monks.' The Monks of Crowland were, perhaps, trying to work on Hugh 
 Evermue, Hereward's son-in-law, or Richard of Rulos, his grandson-in- 
 law, as they were trying to work on the Norman kings, when they 
 invented these charters of the eighth and ninth centuries, with names of 
 Saxon kings, and nobles of Leofric and Godiva's house ; or, again, the 
 land being notoriously given to Crowland by men of certain names, who 
 were then of no authority as rebels and dispossessed, it was necessary to 
 invent men of like names, who were safely entrenched behind Saxon 
 antiquity with the ancestors of Edward the Confessor. But in their 
 clumsiness they seem to have mingled with them, in the said charters and 
 their mythic battles against the Danes, purely Danish names, such as 
 Siward, Asketyl, Azer, Harding, Grimketyl, Wulfketyl, etc., which surely 
 prove the fraud. Meanwhile, the very names of Levric, Algar, Morcar, 
 Thorold, genuine or not, seem to prove that the houses of Leofric and 
 Godiva were ancient rulers in these parts, whose phantoms had to be 
 evoked when needed.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 HOW HEEEWARD WAS OUTLAWED, AND WENT NORTH TO SEEK 
 
 HIS FORTUNES 
 
 In Kesteven of Lincolnshire, between the forest and the fen, lies 
 the good market-town of Bourne, the birthplace, according to 
 all tradition, of two great Englislimen ; of Cecil Lord Burleigh, 
 justly remembered throughout all time, and of Here ward the 
 Wake, not unjustly, perhaps, long forgotten. Two long streets 
 meet opposite the house where Burleigh was born, one from 
 Spalding and the eastern fens, the other from the forest, and 
 the line of the old Roman road on the north. From thence the 
 Watergang Street leads, by the side of clear running streams, to 
 the old Priory church, and the great labyrinth of grass-grown 
 banks, which was once the castle of the Wakes. Originally, it 
 may be, those earthworks were a Roman camp, guarding the 
 King Street, or Roman road, which splits off from the Ermine 
 Street near Castor, and runs due north through Bourne to Slea- 
 ford. They may have guarded, too, the Car -dyke, or great 
 Catchwater drain, which runs from Peterborough northward 
 into the heart of Lincolnshire, a still-enduring monument of 
 Roman genius. Their site, not on one of the hills behind, but 
 on the dead flat meadow, was determined doubtless by the noble 
 fountain, bourn, or brunne, which rises among the earthworks, 
 and gives its name to the whole town. In the flat meadow 
 bubbles up still the great pool of limestone water, crystal clear, 
 suddenly and at once ; and runs away, winter and summer, a 
 stream large enough to turn many a mill, and spread perpetual 
 verdure through the fat champaign lands. 
 
 The fountain was, doubtless, in the middle age, miraculous 
 and haunted : perhaps, in heathen times, divine and consecrate. 
 Even till a late date, the millers of Bourne paid water-dues to 
 those of a village some miles away ; on the strength of the un- 
 doubted fact, that a duck put into Bourne Pool would pass 
 underground into the millhead of the said village. Doubtless 
 it was a holy well, such as were common in the eastern counties, 
 as they are still in Ireland ; a well where rags, flowers, and 
 other gew-gaws might have been seen hanging, ofierings to the
 
 CHAP. I HOW HEREWARD WAS OUTLAWED 15 
 
 spirit of the well, whether one of those ' nickers,' ' develen,' or 
 ' luther-gostes,' which St. Botulf met when he founded Boston 
 near by, or one of those 'fair ladies,' 'elves,' or water-nymphs, 
 who, exorcised from the North, still linger in the fountains of 
 modern Greece. Exorcised, certainly, the fairy of Bourne was 
 at an early date ; for before the Conquest the Peterborough 
 monks had founded a cell outside the castle ditch, and, calling 
 in the aid of the chief of the Apostles against those spirits of 
 darkness who peopled, innumerable, earth, air, water, and fen, 
 had rechristened it as ' Peterspool,' which name it bears unto 
 this day. 
 
 Military skill has, evidently, utilised the waters of the Peters- 
 pool from the earliest times. They filled, at some remote period, 
 the dykes at a great earthwork to the north, which has been 
 overlooked by antiquaries, because it did not (seemingly) form 
 part of the enceinte of the mediaeval castle of the Wakes. It 
 still fills the dykes of that castle, whereof nothing remains now 
 save banks of turf, and one great artificial barrow, on which 
 stood the keep, even in Leland's time, it would seem, somewhat 
 dilapidate. 'There appear,' he says, 'gi'ete ditches, and the 
 dungeon hill of an ancient castle agayn the west end of the 
 Priory. ... It longgid to the Lord Wake ; and much service of 
 the Wake fee is done to this Castelle, and every feodary knoweth 
 his station and place of service.' 
 
 Of the stonework nothing now remains. The square dun- 
 geon, ' a fayre and prettie building, with iv. square towers . . . 
 hall, chambers, all manner of houses and offices for the lord and 
 his train,'' and so forth, is utterly gone. The gate-house, thirty 
 feet liigh, with its circular Saxon (probably Norman) arch, has 
 been pulled down by the Lords of Burleigli, to build a farm- 
 house ; the fair park is divided into fair meadows ; and a large 
 part of the town of Bourne is, probably, built of the materials 
 of the Wakes' castle, and the Priory, which arose under its pro- 
 tection. Those Priory lands passed into the hands of Trollopes 
 and Pochins, as did the lands • of the castle into those of tlie 
 Cecils ; and of that fee of the Wakes, all, as far as I know, is 
 lost, fors Vhonnetcr, which shone out of late in that hero of 
 ' Arrah,' who proved, by his valour, pertinacity, and shiftfulness, 
 not unworthy of his great ancestor Here ward. Verily the good 
 old blood of England is not yet worn out. 
 
 A pleasant place, and a rich, is Bourne now ; and a pleasant 
 place and rich must it have been in the old Anglo -Danish 
 times, when the hall of Leofric, the great Earl of Mercia, stood 
 where the Wakes' feudal castle stood in after years. To the 
 south and west stretched, as now, the illimitable flat of fen, 
 witli the spires of Crowland gleaming bright between higli trees 
 upon the southern horizon ; and to the north, from the very 
 
 1 Peak's account of the towns in Kesteveu.
 
 16 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 edge of tlie town fields, rose the great Bruneswald, the forest of 
 oak, and ash, and elm, which still covers many miles of Lincoln- 
 shire, as Bourne Wood, Grimsthorpe Park, and parks and wood- 
 lands without number. To the south-west it joined the great 
 forest of Rockingham, in Northamptonshire. To the west, it all 
 but marched with Charnwood Forest in Leicestershire, and to 
 the north - west, with the great Sherwood, which covered 
 Nottinghamshire, and reached over the borders of Yorkshire. 
 Mighty fowling and fishing was there in the fen below, and 
 mighty hunting on the weald above, where still haunt, in 
 Grimstliorpe Park, the primeval red-deer, descendants of those 
 who fell by Hereward's bow, ere yet the first Lovell had built 
 his castle on the steep, or the Cistercian monks of Fountains 
 liad found out the deep -embowered vale of God, and settled 
 themselves in the glen beneath the castle walls. 
 
 It is of those earlier days that this story tells ; of the latter 
 half of the eleventh century, and the eve of the Norman Con- 
 quest, when Leofric the Earl had the dominion in forest and 
 manorial rights, in wood, and town, and fen ; and beside him, 
 upon the rich strip of champaign, other free Danish holders, 
 whose names may be still found in Domesday-book, held small 
 estates ; and owed, probably, some military service to the great 
 earl at the hall within the Roman eartliwork. 
 
 Tlie house of Bourne, as far as it can be reconstructed by 
 imagination, was altogether unlike one of the tall and gloomy 
 Norman castles which, in the course of the next few genera- 
 tions, must have taken its place. It was much more like a house 
 in a Chinese painting : an irregular group of low buildings, 
 almost all of one storey, stone below and timber above, with 
 high-peaked roofs — at least in the more Danish country — afford- 
 ing a seimrate room, or rather house, for each different need of 
 the family. 8uch a one may be seen in the illuminations of the 
 century. In the centre of the building is the hall, with a door 
 or doors opening out into the court ; and sitting thereat at the 
 the top of a flight of steps, the lord and lady, dealing clothes to 
 the naked and bread to tlie hungry. Behind the hall is a round 
 tower, seemingly the strong place of the whole house. It must 
 have stood at Bourne upon the dungeon hill. On one side of 
 the hall is a chapel ; by it a large room or bower for the ladies; 
 on the other side a kitclien ; and stuck on to bower, kitchen, 
 and every other principal building, lean-to after lean-to, the 
 uses of which it is impossible now to discover. The house had 
 grown with the wants of the family — as many good old English 
 houses have done to this day. Round it would be scattered 
 barns and stables, in which grooms and herdsmen slept side by 
 side with their own horses and cattle ; beyond, the yard, garth, 
 or garden-fence, high earth-banks with palisades on top, while 
 the waters of the Peterspool wandered around outside all. Such 
 was most probably the 'villa,' 'ton,' or 'town,' of Earl Leofric,
 
 I HOW HEREWARD WAS OUTLAWED 17 
 
 the Lord of Bourne ; such too, probably, tlie hall at Laughton- 
 en-le-Morthem in Yorkshire, which belonged to his grandson 
 Edwin, and therefore, probably, to liini. Leofric's other resi- 
 dence, the castle of Warwick, was already, it may be, a building 
 of a more solid and Norman type, such as had been built 
 already, here and there, for Edward the Confessor's French 
 courtiers, by the hands of ' Welisce men,' i.e. French-speaking 
 foreigners.^ 
 
 Known, I presume, to all is Lady Godiva, mistress of Bourne, 
 the most beautiful as well as the most saintly woman of her 
 day ; who, all her life, kept at her own expense thirteen poor 
 folk wherever she went ; who, throughout Lent, watched in the 
 church at triple matins, namely, one for the Trinity, one for the 
 Cross, and one for St. Mary ; who every day read the psalter 
 through, and so persevered in good and holy works to her life's 
 end, the devoted friend of St. Mary, ever a virgin ; who en- 
 riched monasteries witliout number — Leominster, Wenlock, 
 Chester, St. Mary's Stow by Lincoln, Worcester, Evesham ; and 
 who, above all, founded the great monastery in that town of 
 Coventry which has made her name immortal for another and 
 a far nobler deed ; and enriched it so much, that no monastery 
 in England possessed such abundance of gold, silver, jewels, and 
 precious stones, besides that most precious jewel of all, the arm 
 of St. Augustine, which not Lady Godiva, but her friend Arch- 
 bishop Ethelnoth, presented to Coventry ; having bought it at 
 Pa via for a hundred talents of silver, and a talent of gold.^ 
 
 Less known, save to students, is her husband Leofric, whose 
 bones lie by those of Godiva in that same minster of Coventry ; 
 how ' his counsel was as if one had opened the divine oracles ; ' 
 very 'wise,' says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 'for God and for 
 the world, which was a blessing to all this nation ; ' the greatest 
 man, as I have said, in Edward the Confessor's court, save his 
 still gi-eater rival, Earl Godmn. 
 
 Less known, again, are the chikh-en of that illustrious pair ; 
 Algar, or Alfgar, Earl of 3Iercia after his father, who died after 
 a short and stormy life, lea\ang two sons, Edwin and ]Morcar, 
 the fair and hapless young earls, always spoken of together, as 
 if they had been twins ; a daughter, Aldytha, or Elfgiva, 
 married first (according to some) to Griffin, King of North 
 Wales, and certainly afterwards to Harold, King of England ; 
 and another, Lucia (as the Normans at least called her), whose 
 fate was, if possible, more sad than tliat of her brothers. 
 
 Their second son was Hereward, whose history this tale sets 
 forth ; their tliird and youngest, a boy whose name is unknown. 
 
 They had probably another daughter besides ; married, it 
 
 ^ One such had certainly been built in Herefordshire. Lappenberg 
 attributes it, with great probability, to Raoul, or Ralph the Staller, 
 neijhew of Edward the Confessor, and a near relation of Leofric. 
 
 - William of Malmesbury, 
 
 C H. T, w.
 
 18 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 may be, to some son of Leofric's staunch friend old Siward 
 Digre ; and the mother, may be, of the two young Siwards, the 
 'white' and the 'red,' who figure in chronicle and legend as the 
 nephews of Hereward. But this last pedigree is little more 
 than a conjecture. 
 
 Be these things as they may, Godiva was the greatest lady in 
 England, save two : Edith, Harold's sister, the nominal wife of 
 Edward the Confessor ; and Githa, or Gyda, as her own Danes 
 called her, Harold's mother, niece of Canute the Great. Great 
 was Godiva, and might liave been proud enough, had she been 
 inclined to that pleasant sin. But always (for there is a skele- 
 ton, they say, in every house) she carried that about her which 
 might well keep her humble ; namely, shame at the misconduct 
 of Hereward, her son. 
 
 Now on a day — about the year 1054 — while Earl Siward was 
 helping to bring Birnam wood to Dunsinane, to avenge his 
 murdered brother-in-law. Lady Godiva sat, not at her hall-door, 
 dealing food and clothing to her thirteen poor folk, but in her 
 bower, with her youngest son, a two-years' boy, at her knee. 
 She was listening with a face of shame and horror to the com- 
 plaint of Herluin, steward of Peterborough, who had fallen in 
 this afternoon witli Hereward and his crew of housecretes. 
 
 To keep a following of stout housecarles, or men-at-arms, was 
 the pride as well as the duty of an Anglo-Danish lord, as it was, 
 till lately, of a Scoto-Danisli liighland laird. And Hereward, 
 in imitation of his father and his elder brother, must needs 
 have his following from the time he was but fifteen years old. 
 All the unruly youths of the neighbourhood, sons of free 
 'holders,' who owed some sort of military service to Earl 
 Leofric ; Geri, Hereward's cousin ; Winter, whom he called his 
 brother-in-arms ; the Wulfrics, the Wulfards, the Azers, and 
 many another wild blade, had banded themselves round a young 
 nobleman more unruly than themselves. Their names were 
 already a terror to all decent folk, at wakes and fairs, alehouses 
 and village sjoorts. They atoned, be it remembered, for their 
 early sins, by making those names in after years a terror to the 
 invaders of their native land : but as yet their prowess was 
 limited to drunken brawls and faction-figlits ; to upsetting old 
 women at their work, levying blackmail from quiet chapmen on 
 the highroad, or bringing back in triumph, sword in hand and 
 club on shoulder, their leader Hereward from some duel which 
 his insolence had provoked. 
 
 But this time, if the story of the steward was to be believed, 
 Hereward and his housecarles had taken an ugly stride forward 
 toward the pit. They had met him riding along, intent upon 
 his psalter, home towards his abbey from its cell at Bourne — 
 ' Whereon your son, most gracious lady, bade me stand, saying 
 that his men were thirsty ; and he had no money to buy ale 
 withal, and none so likely to help him thereto as a fat priest —
 
 I HOW HEREWARD WAS OUTLAWED 19 
 
 for so he scandalously termed me, who, as your ladyship knows, 
 am leaner than the minster bell-ropes, with fasting Wednesdays 
 and Fridays throughout the year, beside the vigils of the saints, 
 and the former and latter Lents. 
 
 ' But when he saw who I was, as if inspired by a malignant 
 spirit, he shouted out my name, and bade his companions throw 
 me to the ground.' 
 
 ' Throw you to the ground 1 ' shuddered the Lady Godiva. 
 
 'In much mire, madam. After which he took my palfrey, 
 saying that heaven's gate was too lowly for men on horseback 
 to get in thereat ; and then my marten's fur gloves and cape 
 which your gracious self bestowed on me, alleging that the rules 
 of my order allowed only one garment, and no furs save catskins 
 and suchlike. And lastly — I tremble while I relate, thinking 
 not of the loss of my poor money, but the loss of an immortal 
 soul — took from me a jourse with sixteen silver pennies, which 
 I had collected from our tenants for the use of the monastery, 
 and said blasphemously that I and mine had clieated your lady- 
 ship, and therefore him your son, out of many a fat manor ere 
 now ; and it was but fair that he should tithe the rents thereof, 
 as he should never get the lands out of our claws again ; with 
 more of the like, which I blush to repeat — and so left me to 
 trudge hither in the mire.' 
 
 * Wretched boy ! ' said the Lady Godiva, and hid her face in 
 her hands ; ' and more wretched I, to have brought such a son 
 into the world ! ' 
 
 The monk had hardly finished his doleful story, when there 
 was a pattering of heavy feet, a noise of men shouting and 
 laughing outside, and a voice above all calling for the monk by 
 name, which made that good man crouch behind the curtain of 
 Lady Godiva's bed. The next moment the door of the bower 
 was thrown violently open, and in swaggered a noble lad 
 eighteen years old. His face was of extraordinary beauty, save 
 that the lower jaw was too long and heavy, and tliat his eyes 
 wore a strange and almost sinister expression, from the fact that 
 the one of tliem was gray, and the other blue. He was short, 
 but of immense breadth of chest and strength of limb ; while his 
 delicate hands and feet and long locks of golden hair marked 
 him of most noble, and even, as he really was, of ancient royal 
 race. He was dressed in a gaudy costume, resembling on the 
 whole that of a Highland cliieftain. His wrists and tliroat 
 were tattooed in blue patterns ;i and he carried sword and 
 
 ^ Some antiquaries have denied, on the ground of insufficient evidence, 
 that the EngUsh tattooed themselves. Others have referred to some such 
 custom the secret marks by which heroes are so often recognised in old 
 romances, as well as those by which Edith the Swan-neck is said to have 
 recognised Harold's body on the field of Hastings. Hereward is, likewise, 
 recognised by ' signis satis ex([uisitis in corpore designantia vulnera tenu- 
 issimoruni cicatricum. ' I am not answerable for the Latin ; but as I
 
 20 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 dagger, a gold ring round his neck/ and gold rings on his wrists. 
 He was a lad to hav^e gladdened the eyes of any mother : but 
 there was no gladness in the Lady Godiva's eyes as she received 
 him, nor had there been for many a year. She looked on him 
 with sternness, with all but horror : and he, his face fluslied 
 with wine, which he had tossed off as he passed through the hall 
 to steady his nerves for tlie coming storm, looked at her with 
 smiling defiance, the result of long estrangement between 
 mother and son. 
 
 ' Well, my lady,' said he, ere she could speak, ' I heard that 
 this good fellow was here ; and came home as fast as I could, to 
 see that he told you as few lies as j^ossible.' 
 
 ' He has told me,' said she, ' that you have robbed the Church 
 of God.' 
 
 ' Robbed him, it may be, an old hoody crow, against whom I 
 have a grudge of ten years' standing.' 
 
 ' Wretched, wretched boy ! What wickedness next ? Know 
 you not, that he who robs the Churcli, robs God Himself?' 
 
 ' If a man sin against another,' put in the monk from behind 
 the curtain, ' the judge shall judge him : but if a man sin against 
 the Lord, who shall intreat for him ? ' 
 
 'Who indeed?' cried Lady Godiva. 'Think, think, hapless 
 boy, what it is to go about the world henceforth with the wrath 
 of Him who made it abiding on you — cut off from the protection 
 of all angels, open to the assaults of all devils 1 How will your 
 life be safe a moment from lightning, from flood, from slipping 
 knife, from stumbling horse, from some liidden and hideous 
 death ? If the fen -fiends lure you away to drown you in the 
 river, or the wood-fiends leap on you in the thicket to wring 
 your neck, of what use to you then the suffrages of the saints, 
 or the sign of the holy cross ? What help, what hope, for you — 
 for me — but that you must perish foully, and, it may be, never 
 find a grave ? ' 
 
 Lady Godiva — as the constant associate of clerks and monks 
 — spoke after an artificial and Latinised fashion, at which 
 Here ward was not wont to laugh and jest : but as he believed, 
 no less than his pious mother, in innumerable devils and ghosts, 
 and other uncanny creatures, who would surely do him a mis- 
 chief if they could, he began to feel somewhat frightened ; but 
 he answered none the less stoutly :— 
 
 understand it, it refers not to war- wounds but to very delicate marks. 
 Moreover, William of Malmesbury, sub anno 1066, seems sufficiently ex- 
 plicit when lie says that tlie English ' adorned their skins with punctured 
 designs.' 
 
 May not our sailors' fashion of tattooing their arms and chests with 
 strange devices be a remnant of this very fashion, kept up, if not origin- 
 ated, by the desire that the corpse should be recognised after death ? 
 
 ^ Earl Waltheof appears to Ingulf in a dream, a few years after, with a 
 gold tore round his neck.
 
 I HOW HEREWARD WAS OUTLAWED 21 
 
 'As for devils, and suchlike, I never saw one yet, by flood or 
 field, night or day. And if one comes, I must just copy old 
 Baldwin Bras-de-Fer of Flanders, and see wliether the devil or 
 I can hit liardest. As for the money — I have no grudge against 
 St. Peter ; and I will warrant myself to rob some one else of 
 sixteen pennies ere long, and pay the saint back every 
 farthing.' 
 
 ' The saint takes not the fruits of robbery. He would hurl 
 them far away, by might divine, were they laid upon his altar,' 
 quoth the steward. 
 
 ' I wonder he has not hurled thee away long ago, then, with 
 thy gifts about thine ears ; for thou hast brought many a bag of 
 grist to his mill, ere now, that was as foully earned as aught of 
 mine. I tell thee, man, if thou art wise, thou wilt hold thy 
 tongue, and let me and St. Peter settle this quarrel between us. 
 I have a long score against thee, as thou knowest, which a gentle 
 battery in the greenwood has but half paid oft'; and I warn thee 
 not to make it longer by thy tongue, lest I shorten the said 
 tongue for thee with cold steel.' 
 
 'What does he mean ? ' asked Godiva, shuddering. 
 
 'This!' quoth Hereward, fiercely enough; 'that this monk 
 forgets that I have been a monk myself, or should have been 
 one by now, if you, my pious mother, had had your will of me, 
 as you may if you like of that baby there at your knee. He 
 forgets why I left Peterborough Abbey, when Winter and I 
 turned all the priest's books upside down in the choir, and they 
 would have flogged us — me, the earl's son— me, the Viking's son 
 — me, the champion, as I will be yet, and make all lands ring 
 with the fame of my deeds, as they rang with the fame of my 
 forefathers, before they became the slaves of monks ; and how, 
 when Winter and I got hold of the kitchen spits, and up to the 
 top of the peat-stack by BoUdyke-gate, and held them all at bay 
 there, a whole abbeyf ul of cowards there against two seven-years' 
 children, — it was that weasel there bade set the peat-stack 
 alight under us, and so bring us down ; and would have done it, 
 too, had it not been for my uncle Brand, the only man that I 
 care for in this wide world. Do you think I have not owed you 
 a grudge ever since that day, monk 1 And do you think I will 
 not pay it? Do you think I would not have burned Peter- 
 borough minster over your head before now, had it not been for 
 uncle Brand's sake? See that I do not do it yet. See that 
 when there is another prior in Borough you do not find Here- 
 ward the Berserker smoking you out some dark night, as he 
 would smoke a wasp's nest. And I will, by ' 
 
 'Hereward, Hereward !' cried his motlier, 'godless, God-for- 
 gotten boy, what words are thest; ? Silence, before you burden 
 your soul with an oath which the devils in hell will accept and 
 force you to keep,' and she sprang up, and seizing his arm, laid 
 her hand upon his mouth.
 
 22 HEREWARD THE WAKE CHAr. 
 
 Hereward looked at her majestic face, once lovely, now stern 
 and careworn ; and trembled for a moment. Had there been 
 any tenderness in it, his history might have been a very differ- 
 ent one : but, alas ! there was none. Not that she was in her- 
 self untender : but that her great piety (call it not superstition, 
 for it was then the only form known or possible to pure and 
 devout souls) was so outraged by this insult to that clergy whose 
 willing slave she had become, that the only inethod of reclaim- 
 ing the sinner had been long forgotten in genuine horror at his 
 sin. ' Is it not enough,' she went on sternly, ' that you should 
 have become the bully and the ruffian of all the fens? — that 
 Hereward the leaper, Hereward the wrestler, Hereward the 
 thrower of the hammer — sports after all only fit for the sons of 
 slaves, should be also Hereward the drunkard, Hereward the 
 common fighter, Hereward the breaker of houses, Hereward the 
 leader of mobs of boon companions who bring back to us, in 
 shame and sorrow, the days when our heathen forefathers 
 ravaged tliis land with fire and sword ? Is it not enough for me 
 that my son should be a common stabber V 
 
 'Whoever called me stabber to you, lies. If I have killed 
 men, or had them killed, I have done it in fair fight.' 
 
 But she went on unheeding — ' Is it not enough that after 
 having squandered on your fellows all the money tlaat you could 
 wring from my bounty or win at your base sports, you should 
 have robbed your own father, collected his rents behind his 
 back, taken money and goods from his tenants by threats and 
 blows : but that, after outraging them, you must add to all this 
 a worse sin likewise, outraging God, and driving me — me who 
 have borne with you, me who have concealed all for your sake — 
 to tell your father that of which the very telling will turn my 
 hair to gray 1 ' 
 
 ' So you will tell my father 1 ' said Hereward coolly. 
 
 'And if I should not, this monk himself is bound to do so, or 
 his superior, your uncle Brand.' 
 
 ' My uncle Brand will not, and your monk dare not.' 
 
 'Then I must. I have loved you long and well ; but there is 
 one thing which I must love better than you, and that is my 
 conscience and my Maker.' 
 
 ' Those are two things, my lady mother, and not one ; so you 
 had better not confound them. As for the latter, do you not 
 think that He who made the world is well able to defend His 
 own property — if the lands, and houses, and cattle, and money, 
 which these men wheedle and threaten and foi-ge out of you and 
 my father, are really His property, and not merely their plunder 1 
 As for your conscience, my lady mother, really you have done so 
 many good deeds in your life, that it might be beneficial to you 
 to do a bad deed once in a way, so as to keep your soul in a 
 wholesome state of humility.' 
 
 The monk groaned aloud. Lady Godiva groaned ; but it was
 
 I HOW HEREWARD AVAS OUTLAWED 23 
 
 inwardly. There was silence for a moment. Both were abashed 
 by the lad's utter shamelessness. 
 
 ' And you will tell my father ? ' said he again. ' He is at the 
 old miracle-worker's court at Westminster. He will tell the 
 miracle-worker, and I shall be outlawed.' 
 
 ' And if you be, wretched boy, whom have yovi to blame but your- 
 self 1 Can you expect that tlie king, sainted even as he is before 
 his death, dare pass over such an offence against Holy Church ? ' 
 
 ' Blame ? I shall blame no one. Pass over 1 I hope he will 
 not pass over it. I only want an excuse like that for turning 
 kemi^ery-man — knight-errant, as those Norman puppies call it 
 — like Kegnar Lodbrog, or Frithiof, or Harold Hardraade ; and 
 try what a man can do for himself in the world with nothing 
 to help him in heaven and earth, with neither saint nor angel, 
 friend or counsellor, to see to him, save his wits and his good 
 sword. So send off the messenger, good mother mine, and I will 
 promise you I will not have him ham-strung on the way, as 
 some of my housecarles would do if I but held up my hand ; 
 and let the miracle-monger fill up tlie measure of his folly by 
 making an enemy of one more bold fellow in the world.' 
 
 And he swaggered out of the room. 
 
 When he was gone the Lady Godiva bowed her head into her 
 lap, and wept long and bitterly. Neither her maidens nor the 
 priest dare speak to lier for nigh an hour ; but at the end of 
 that time she lifted up her head, and settled her face again, till 
 it was like that of a marble saint over a minster door, and 
 called for ink and paper, and wrote her letter, and then asked 
 for a trusty messenger who should carry it up to Westminster. 
 
 ' None so swift or sure,' said the house steward, ' as Martin 
 Lightfoot.' 
 
 Lady Godiva shook her head. 'I mistrust tliat man,' she 
 said. ' He is too fond of my poor — of the Lord Hereward.' 
 
 ' He is a strange one, my lady, and no one knows whence lie 
 came, and I sometimes fancy whither he may go either ; but 
 ever since my lord threatened to hang him for talking with my 
 young master, he has never spoken to him, nor scarcely, indeed, 
 to living soul. And one thing there is makes him or any man 
 sure, as long as he is well paid, and tliat is, that he cares for 
 nothing in heaven or earth save himself and what he can get.' 
 
 So j\Iartin Lightfoot was sent for. He came in straight into 
 the lady's bedchamber, after the simple fashion of those days. 
 He was a tall, bony man, as was to be expected from his nick- 
 name ; lean as a rake, with a long hooked nose, a scanty brown 
 beard, and a high conical head. His only garment was a shabby 
 gray woollen tunic which served him both as coat and kilt, and 
 laced brogues of untanned hide. He might have been any age 
 from twenty to forty ; but his face was distigured with deep scars 
 and long exposure to the weather. He dropped on one knee, 
 holding his greasy cap in his hand, and looked, not at his lady's
 
 24 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 face, but at her feet, with a stupid and frightened expression. 
 She knew very little of him, save that her husband had picked 
 him up upon the road as a wanderer some five years since ; that 
 he had been employed as a doer of odd jobs and runner of 
 messages, and that he was supposed from his taciturnity and 
 strangeness to have something inicanny about him. 
 
 ' Martin,' said the lady, ' they tell me that you are a silent 
 and a prudent man.' 
 
 'That am I. 
 
 ' " Tongue breaketli bane," 
 Though she herself hath nane.' 
 
 ' I shall try you ; do you know your way to London ? ' 
 
 'Yes. Cardyke, King Street, Ermine Street, London Town.' 
 
 ' To your lord's lodgings ? ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 ' How long shall you be going there with this letter ? ' 
 
 'A day and a half.' 
 
 ' When shall you be back hither ? ' 
 
 ' On the fourth day.' 
 
 ' And you will go to my lord and deliver this letter safely 1 ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 ' And safely bring back an answer ? ' 
 
 ' Nay, not that.' 
 
 'Not that? 
 
 Martin made a doleful face, and drew his hand first across 
 his leg, and then across his throat, as hints of the doom which 
 he expected. 
 
 'He — the Lord Hereward — has promised not to let thee be 
 harmed.' 
 
 ]\Iartin gave a start, and his dull eyes flashed out a moment ; 
 but the next he answered, as curtly as was his wont — 
 
 ' The more fool he. But women's bodkins are sharp as well 
 as men's knives.' 
 
 ' Bodkins ?_ Whose? What babblest of ? ' 
 
 ' Them,' said Martin, pointing to the bower maidens — girls of 
 good family who stood round ; chosen for their beauty, after the 
 fashion of those times, to attend on great ladies. There was a 
 cry of angry and contemi^tuous denial, not unmixed with some- 
 thing like laughter, which showed that Martin had but spoken 
 the truth. Hereward, in spite of all his sins, was the darling of 
 his mother's bower, and there was not one of the damsels but 
 would have done anything short of murder to have prevented 
 Martiir carrying the letter. 
 
 ' Silence, man ! ' said Lady Godiva, so sternly that Martin 
 saw that he had gone too far. ' How knows such as thou what 
 is in this letter 1 ' 
 
 'All the town must know,' said Martin sullenly. 
 
 ' Best that they should, and know that right is done here/ 
 said she, trying to be stern.
 
 I now HEREWARD WAS OUTLAWED 25 
 
 ' I will take it,' said Martin. He held out his hand, took it 
 and looked at it, iDut upside down and without any attempt to 
 read it. 
 
 'His own mother,' said lie, after a while. 
 
 'AVhat is that to thee?' said Lady Godiva, blushing and 
 kindling. 
 
 ' Notliing — I had no mother. But Clod has one.' 
 
 ' What meanest thou, knave ? Wilt thou take the letter or 
 no?' 
 
 ' I will take it.' And he again looked at it, without rising off 
 his knee. 'His own father, too.' 
 
 ' What is that to thee, I say again ? ' 
 
 ' Nothing — I have no father. But God's Son has one.' 
 
 ' What wilt thou, thou strange man 1 ' asked she, puzzled and 
 half-frightened ; ' and how earnest thou, again I ask, to know 
 what is in this letter ? ' 
 
 ' All the town, I say again, must know. A city that is set on a 
 hill cannot be hid. On the fourth day from this I will be back.' 
 
 And Martin rose, and putting the letter solemnly into the 
 purse at his girdle, shot out of the door with clenched teeth, as 
 a man upon a fixed purpose which it would lighten his heart to 
 carry out. He ran rapidly through the large outer hall, past 
 the long oak table, at which Hereward and his boon companions 
 were drinking and roystering. As he passed the young lord he 
 cast on him a look so full of 'meaning, that though Hereward knew 
 not what the meaning was, it startled him, and for a moment 
 softened him. Did this man, who had sullenly avoided him for 
 more than two years, whom he had looked on as a clod or a 
 l^ost in the field beneath his notice, since he could be of no use 
 to him — did this man still care for him ? Hereward had reason 
 to know better than most that there was something strange 
 and uncanny about the man. Did lie mean him well ? Or had 
 he some grudge against him, which made him undertake this 
 journey willingly and out of spite — possibly with the will to 
 make bad worse ? For an instant Hereward's heart misgave 
 him. He would stop the letter at all risks. ' Hold him ! ' he 
 cried to his comrades. 
 
 But Martin turned to him, laid his finger on his lips, smiled 
 kindly, and saying 'You promised !' caught up a loaf fi'om the 
 table, slipped from amongst them like an eel, and darted through 
 the door, and out of the close. They followed him to the great 
 gate, and there stopped, some cursing, some laughing. To give 
 Martin Lightfoot a yard of law was never to come up with liim 
 again. Some called for bows to bring liim down with a jiart- 
 ingshot. But Hereward forbade them ; and stood leaning 
 against the gate-post, watcliing him trot on like a lean wolf 
 over the lawn, till he sprang over the Car-dyke bank, and fled 
 straight south into the misty fen. 
 
 'Now, lads,' said Hereward, 'home with you all, and make
 
 26 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 your peace with your fathers. In this house you never drink 
 ale again.' 
 
 They looked at him, surprised. 
 
 ' You are disbanded, my gallant army. As long as I could cut 
 long thongs out of other men's hides, I could feed you like earls' 
 sons ; but now I must feed myself, and a dog over his bone 
 wants no company. Outlawed I shall be before the week is 
 out ; and unless you wish to be outlawed too, you will obey 
 orders, and home.' 
 
 ' We will follow you to the world's end,' cried some. 
 
 ' To tlie rope's end, lads : that is all you will get in my com- 
 pany. Go home with you, and those who feel a calling, let them 
 turn monks ; and those who have not, let them learn 
 
 ' " For to plough and to sow, 
 And to reap and to mow, 
 And to be a farmer's boy." 
 Good-night.' 
 
 And he went in, and shut the great gates after him, leaving 
 them astonished. 
 
 To take his advice, and to go home, was the simplest thing 
 to be done. A few of them on their return were soundly beaten, 
 and deserved it ; a few were hidden by their mothers for a week 
 in hay-lofts and hen-roosts, till their fathers' anger had passed 
 away. But only one seems to have turned monk or clerk, and 
 that was Leofric the Unlucky, godson of th-e great earl, and 
 poet-in-ordinary to the band. 
 
 The next morning at dawn Hereward mounted his best horse, 
 armed himself from head to foot, and rode over to Peter- 
 borough. 
 
 When he came to the abbey gate, he smote thereon with his 
 lance-butt, till the porter's teeth rattled in his head for fear. 
 
 ' Let me in ! ' he shouted. ' I am Hereward Leofricsson. I 
 must see my uncle Brand.' 
 
 ' O my most gracious lord,' cried the porter, thrusting his 
 head out of the wicket, ' what is this that you have been doing 
 to our steward 1 ' 
 
 ' The tithe of what I will do unless you open the gate ! ' 
 
 ' O my lord ! ' said the porter, as he opened it, ' if our Lady 
 and St. Peter would but have mercy on your fair face, and con- 
 vert your soul to the fear of God and man ' 
 
 ' She would make me as good an old fool as you. Fetch my 
 uncle the prior.' 
 
 The porter obeyed. The son of Earl Leofric was as a young 
 lion among the sheep in those parts ; and few dare say him nay, 
 certainly not the monks of Peterborough ; moreover, the good 
 porter could not help being strangely fond of Hereward — as was 
 every one whom he did not insult, rob, or kill. 
 
 Out came Brand, a noble elder : more fit, from his eye and 
 gait, to be a knight than a monk. He looked sadly at Hereward.
 
 I HOW HEREWARD AVAS OUTLAWED 27 
 
 ' " Dear is bought the honey that is licked off the thorn," 
 quoth Hending,' said he. 
 
 ' Hending bought his wisdom by experience, I suppose,' said 
 Herewaixl, 'and so must I. So I am just starting out to see the 
 world, uncle.' 
 
 ' Naughty, naughty boy ! If we had thee safe here again for 
 a week, we would take this hot blood out of thee, and send thee 
 home in thy right mind.' 
 
 ' Bring a rod and whip me, then. Try, and you shall have your 
 chance. Every one else has had, and this is the end of their labours.' 
 
 'By the chains of St. Peter,' quoth the monk, 'that is just 
 what thou needest. — To hoist thee on such another fool's back, 
 truss thee up, and lay it on lustily, till tliou art ashamed. To 
 treat thee as a man is only to make thee a more heady blown-up 
 ass than thou art already.' 
 
 ' True, most wise uncle. And therefore my still wiser parents 
 are going to treat me like a man indeed, and send me out into 
 the world to seek my fortunes ! ' 
 
 'Eh?' 
 
 ' They are going to prove how thoroughly they trust me to 
 take care of myself, by outlawing me. Eli 1 say I in return. Is 
 not that an honour, and a proof that I have not shown myself a 
 fool, thougli I may have a madman 1 ' 
 
 ' Outlaw you ? O my boy, my darling, my pride ! Get off 
 thy horse, and don't sit up tliei^e, hand on hip, like a turbaned 
 Saracen, defying God and man : but come down and talk reason 
 to me, for the sake of St. Peter and all saints.' 
 
 Hereward threw himself off his horse, and threw his arms 
 round his uncle's neck. 
 
 ' Pish ! Now, uncle, don't cry, do what you will ; lest I cry 
 too. Help me to be a man while I live, even if I go to the black 
 place when I die.' 
 
 ' It shall not be ! ' . . . and the monk swore by all the relics 
 in Peterborough minster. 
 
 ' It must be. It shall be. I like to be outlawed. I want to 
 be outlawed. It makes one feel like a man. There is not an 
 earl in England, save my father, who has not been outlawed in 
 his time. My brother Algar will be outlawed before he dies, if 
 he has the spirit of a man in him. It is the fashion, my uncle, 
 and I must follow it. So hey for the merry greenwood, and 
 the long ships, and the swan's bath, and all the rest of it. 
 Uncle, you will lend me fifty silver pennies ? ' 
 
 ' I ? I would not lend thee one, if I had it, which I have not. 
 And yet, old fool that I am, I believe I would.' 
 
 ' I would pay thee back honestly. I shall go down to Con- 
 stantinople to the Varangers, get my Polotaswarf ^ out of the 
 Kaiser's treasure, and pay thee back five to one.' 
 
 ^ See ' The Heimskringla,' Harold Haidraade's Saga, for the meaning 
 of this word.
 
 28 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 'What does this son of Belial here?' asked an austere 
 voice. 
 
 ' All ! Abbot Leof ric, my very good lord. I have come to ask 
 hospitality of you for some three days. By that time I shall be 
 a wolf's head, and out of the law : and then, if you will give me 
 ten minutes' start, you may put your bloodhounds on my track, 
 and see which run fastest, they or I. You are a gentleman, 
 and a man of honour ; so I trust to you to feed my horse fairly 
 the meanwhile, and not to let your monks poison me.' 
 
 Tlie abbot's face relaxed. He tried to look as solemn as he 
 could ; but he ended in bursting into a very great laughter. 
 
 ' The insolence of this lad passes the miracles of all saints. 
 He robs St. Peter on the highway, breaks into his abbey, insults 
 him to his face, and then asks him for hospitality ; and ' 
 
 ' And gets it,' quoth Hereward. 
 
 ' Wliat is to be done with him, Brand, my friend ? If we turn 
 him out ■' 
 
 ' AVhich we cannot do,' said Brand, looking at the well-mailed 
 and armed lad, ' without calling in half a dozen of our men-at- 
 arms.' 
 
 ' In which case there would be bloodshed and scandal made 
 in the holy precincts.' 
 
 ' And nothing gained ; for yield he would not till he was 
 killed outright, which Heaven forbid ! ' 
 
 'Amen. And if he stay here, he may be persuaded to 
 repentance.' 
 
 ' And restitution.' 
 
 ' As for that,' quoth Hereward (who had remounted his horse 
 from prudential motives, and set him athwart the gateway, so 
 that there was no chance of the doors being slammed behind 
 him), ' if either of you will lend me sixteen pennies, I will pay 
 them back to you and St. Peter before I die, with interest 
 enough to satisfy any Jew, on the word of a gentleman and an 
 earl's son.' 
 
 The abbot burst again into a great laughter. ' Come in, thou 
 graceless renegade, and we will see to thee and thy horse ; and 
 I will pray to St. Peter ; and I doubt not he will have patience 
 with thee, for he is very merciful ; and after all, thy parents 
 have been exceeding good to us, and the righteousness of the 
 father, like his sins, is sometimes visited on the children.' 
 
 Now, why were the two ecclesiastics so uncanonically kind 
 to this wicked youth 1 
 
 Perhaps because Ijotli the old bachelors were wishing from 
 their hearts that they had just such a son of their own. And 
 beside, Earl Leofric was a very great man indeed ; and the 
 wind might change ; for it is an unstable world. 
 
 ' Only, mind, one thing,' said the naughty boy, as he dis- 
 mounted, and halloed to a lay-l^rother to see to his horse, ' don't 
 let me see the face of that Herluin.'
 
 I HOW HEREWARD WAS OUTLAWED 29 
 
 ' And why ? You have wronged him, and he will forgive you, 
 doubtless, like a good Christian as he is.' 
 
 'That is his concern. But if I see him, I cut off his head. 
 And, as uncle Brand knows, I always sleep with my sword 
 under my pillow.' 
 
 ' Oh, that such a mother should have borne such a son ! ' 
 groaned the abbot, as they went in. 
 
 On the fifth day came ]\Iartin Lightfoot, and found Here- 
 ward in Prior Brand's private cell. 
 
 ' Well 1 ' asked Hereward coolly. 
 
 'Is he 1 Is he V stammered Brand, and could not 
 
 finish his sentence. 
 
 Martin nodded. 
 
 Hereward laughed — a loud, swaggering, uneasy laugh. 
 
 'See what it is to be born of just and pious parents. Come, 
 Master Trot-alone, speak out and tell us all about it. Thy lean 
 wolf's legs have run to some purpose. Open thy lean wolf's 
 mouth and speak for once, lest I ease thy legs for the rest of thy 
 life by a cut across the hams. Find thy lost tongue, I say ! ' 
 
 ' Walls have ears, as well as the wild wood,' said Martin. 
 
 ' We are safe here,' said the prior ; ' so speak, and tell us the 
 whole truth.' 
 
 ' Well, when the earl read the letter, he turned red, and pale 
 again, and then nought but — " Men, follow me to the king at 
 Westminster." So we went, all with our weapons, twenty or 
 more, along the Strand, and up into the king's new hall ; and a 
 grand hall it is, but not easy to get into, for the crowd of monks 
 and beggars on the stair.s, hindering honest folks' business. 
 And there sat the king on a high settle, with his pink face and 
 white hair, looking as royal as a bell-wether new washed ; and 
 on either side of him, on the same settle, sat the old fox and the 
 young wolf.'^ 
 
 ' Godwin and Harold ? And where was the queen 1 ' 
 
 ' Sitting on a stool at his feet, with her hands together as if 
 she were praying, and her eyes downcast, as demure as any cat. 
 And so is fulfilled the story, how the sheep-dog went out to get 
 married, and left the fox, the wolf, and the cat to guard the 
 flock.' 
 
 'If thou hast found thy tongue,' said Brand, 'thou art like 
 enough to lose it again by slice of knife, talking such ribaldry 
 of dignities. Dost not know' — and he sank his voice — 'that 
 Abbot Leofric is Earl Harold's man, and that Harold himself 
 made him abbot ? ' 
 
 ' I said — Walls have ears. It was you who told me that we 
 were safe. However, I will bridle the unruly one.' And he 
 went on. 'And your father walked up the hall, his left hand on 
 his sword-hilt, looking an earl all over, as he is.' 
 
 ^ It must be remembered that the house of Godwin is spoken of 
 throughout this book by hereditary enemies.
 
 30 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' He is that,' said Here ward in a low voice. 
 
 ' And he bowed ; and the most magnificent, powerful, and 
 virtuous Godwin (is that speaking evil of dignities 1) would have 
 beckoned him up to sit on tlie high settle; but he looked 
 straight at the king, as if there were never a Godwin or a 
 Godwinsson on earth, and cried as he stood : — 
 
 ' " Justice, my lord the king ! " 
 
 ' And at that the king turned pale, and said : " Who 1 What 1 
 O miserable world ! O last days drawing nearer and neai'er ! 
 O earth, full of violence and blood ! Who has wronged thee 
 now, most dear and noble earl ? " 
 
 '"Justice against my own son." 
 
 ' At that the fox looked at the wolf, and the wolf at the fox, 
 and if they did not smile, it was not for want of will, I warrant. 
 But your father went on, and told all his story ; and when he 
 came to your robbing master monk — " O apostate ! " cries the 
 bell-wether, "O spawn of Beelzebub! excommunicate him, 
 with bell, book, and candle. May lie be thrust down with 
 Korah, Balaam, and Iscariot, to the most Stygian pot of the 
 sempiternal Tartarus." 
 
 ' And at that your father smiled. " That is bishops' work," 
 says he ; " and I want king's work from you, lord king. Out- 
 law me this young i-ebel's sinful body, as by law you can ; and 
 leave his sinful soul to the priests — or to God's mercy, which is 
 like to be more than theirs." 
 
 'Tlien the queen looked up. "Your own son, noble earl? 
 Think of what you are doing — and one, too, whom all say is so 
 gallant and so fair. Oh, persuade him, father — persuade him, 
 Harold my brother — or, if you cannot persuade him, persuade 
 the king at least, and save this poor youth from exile." ' 
 
 ' Puss Velvet-paw knew well enough,' said Hereward in a low 
 voice, 'that the way to harden my father's heart was to set 
 Godwin and Harold on softening it. They ask my pardon fi-om 
 tlie king? I would not take it at their asking, even if my 
 father would.' 
 
 ' There sjDoke a true Leofricsson,' said Brand, in spite of him- 
 self. 
 
 ' " By the " ' (and Martin repeated a certain very solemn 
 
 oath), 'said your father, "justice I will have, my lord king. 
 Who talks to me of my own son ? You put me into my earldom 
 to see justice done, and law obeyed ; and how shall I make 
 others keep within bound if I am not to keep in my own flesh 
 and blood ? Here is this land running headlong to ruin, because 
 every nobleman — ay, every churl who owns a manor, if he dares 
 — must needs arm and saddle, and levy war on his own behalf, 
 and harry and slay tlie king's lieges, if he have not garlic to his 
 roast goose every time he chooses " — and there your father did 
 look at Godwin, once and for all — "and shall I let my son 
 follow the fashion, and do his best to leave the land open and
 
 I HOW HEREWARD WAS OUTLAWED 31 
 
 weak for Norseman, or Dane, or Frenchman, or whoever else 
 hopes next to mount the throne of a king who is too holy to 
 leave an heir behind him 1 " ' 
 
 ' Ahoi ! Martin the silent ! Where learnedst thou so suddenly 
 the trade of preaching ? I thought thou hadst kept thy wind 
 for thy running this two years past. Thou wouldst make as 
 good a talker among the Witan as Godwin himself. Thou 
 givest it us, all word for word, and voice and gesture withal, 
 as if thou wert King Edward's Fi'ench chancellor.' 
 
 ^lartin smiled. ' I am like Falada the horse, my lords, who 
 could only speak to his own true princess* Why I held my 
 tongue of late was only lest they should cut my head otf for 
 talking, as they did poor Falada's.' 
 
 ' Thou art a very crafty knave,' said Brand, ' and hast had 
 clerk-learning in thy time, I can see, and made bad use of it. I 
 misdoubt very much that thou art some runaway monk.' 
 
 ' That am I not, by St. Peter's chains ! ' said iSIartin, in an 
 eager, terrified voice. ' Lord Hereward, I came hither as your 
 father's messenger and servant. You will see me safe out of 
 this abbey, like an honourable gentleman ! ' 
 
 ' I will. All I know of him, uncle, is that he used to tell me 
 stories, when I was a boy, of enchanters and knights and 
 dragons, and suchlike ; and got into trouble for tilling my head 
 with such fancies. Now let him tell his story in peace.' 
 
 'He shall : but I misdoubt the fellow very much. He talks 
 as if he knew Latin ; and what business has a foot-running 
 slave to do that ? ' 
 
 So Martin went on, somewhat abashed. ' " And," said your 
 father, "justice I will have, and leave injustice, and the over- 
 looking of it, to those who wish to profit thereby." 
 
 'And at that Godwin smiled, and said to the king, "The 
 earl is wise, as usual and speaks like a very Solomon. Your 
 Majesty must, in spite of your own tenderness of heart, have 
 these letters of outlawry made out." 
 
 'Then all our men murmured — and I as loud as any. But 
 old Surturbrand the housecarle did more ; for out he stepped 
 to your father's side, and spoke right up liefore the king. 
 
 ' " Bonny times," he said, " I have lived to see, when a lad of 
 Earl Oslac's blood is sent out of the land, a beggar and a wolf's 
 head, for playing a boy's trick or two, and upsetting a shaveling 
 priest ! We managed such wild young colts better, we Vikings 
 who conquered the Danelagh. If Canute had had a son like 
 Hereward — as would to God he had had — he would have dealt 
 with him as old Swend Forkbeard (God grant I meet him in 
 Valhalla, in spite of all priests !) did by Canute himself when he 
 was young, and kicked and plunged awhile at being first bitted 
 and saddled." 
 
 '"What does the man say ?" asked the king, for old Surtur- 
 brand was talking broad Danish.
 
 32 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' " He is a liousecarle of mine, Lord King, a good man and 
 true ; but old age and rough Danisli blood have made him forget 
 that he stands before kings and earls." 
 
 ' " By the head of Odin's horse, earl ! " says Surturbrand, " I 
 have fought knee to knee beside a braver king than that there, 
 and nobler earls than ever a one here ; and was never afraid, 
 like a free Dane, to speak my mind to them by sea or land. 
 And if the king, with his French ways, does not understand a 
 jDlain man's talk, the two earls yonder do right well ; and I say 
 —Deal by this lad in the good old fashion. Give him half a 
 dozen long ships, and what crews he can get together, and send 
 hunout, as Canute would have done, to seek his fortune like a 
 Viking ; and if he comes home with plenty of wounds and 
 plunder, give him an earldom as he deserves. Do you ask your 
 countess. Earl Godwin— she is of the right Danish blood, God 
 bless her ! thougli she is your wife— and see if she does not 
 know how to bring a naughty lad to his senses." 
 
 ' Then Harold the earl said : " The old man is right, king, 
 listen to what he says." And he told him all, quite 
 eagerly.' 
 
 ' How did you know that ? Can you understand French 1 ' 
 
 ' I am a poor idiot, give me a halfpenny,' said Martin in a 
 doleful voice, as _ he threw into his face and wliole figure a look 
 of helpless stupidity and awkwardness, which set them both 
 laughing. 
 
 But Hereward checked himself. ' And thou thinkest he was 
 in earnest 1 ' 
 
 ' As sure as there are holy crows in Crowland. But it was of 
 no use. Your father got a parchment, with an outlandish 
 Norman seal hanging to it, and sent me off with it that same 
 night to give to the lawman. So wolf's head you are, my lord, 
 and there is no use crying over spilt milk.' 
 
 ' And Harold spoke for me ? Not that I care, but it will be 
 as well to tell Abbot Leof ric that, in case he be inclined to turn 
 traitor, and refuse to open the gates. Once outside them, I fear 
 not mortal man.' 
 
 'My poor boy, there will be many a one whom thou hast 
 wronged only too ready to lie in wait for thee, now thy life is 
 in every man's hand. If the outlawry is published, thou hadst 
 best start to-night, and get past Lincoln before morning.' 
 
 ' I shall stay quietly here, and get a good night's rest ; and 
 then ride out to-morrow morning in the face of the whole shire. 
 No, not a word ! You would not have me sneak away like a 
 coward ? ' 
 
 Brand smiled and shrugged his shoulders : being very much 
 of tlie same mind. 
 
 ' At least, go north.' 
 
 ' And why north ? ' 
 
 'You have no quarrel in Northumberland, and the king's
 
 I HOW HEREWARD WAS OUTLAWED 33 
 
 writ runs very slowly there, if at all. Old Siward Digre may 
 stand your friend.' 
 
 ' He 1 he is a fast friend of my father's.' 
 
 ' What of that ? the old Viking will like you none the less for 
 having shown a touch of his own temper. Go to liim, I say, 
 and tell him that I sent you.' 
 
 ' But he is fighting the Scots beyond the Forth.' 
 
 ' So much the better. There will be good work for you to 
 do. And Gilbert of Ghent is up there too, I hear, trying to 
 settle himself among tlie Scots. He is your mother's kinsman ; 
 and as for your being an outlaw, he wants hard hitters and 
 hard riders, and all is tish that comes to his net. Find him out 
 too, and tell him that I sent you.' 
 
 ' You are a good old uncle,' said Hereward. ' Why were you 
 not a soldier?' 
 
 Brand laughed somewhat sadly. 
 
 'If I had been a soldier, lad, where wouldst thou have looked 
 for a friend this day ? No. God has done what was merciful 
 with me and my sins. May He do the same by thee and 
 thine.' 
 
 Hereward made an impatient movement. He disliked any 
 word which seemed likely to soften liis own hardness of heart. 
 But he kissed his uncle lovingly on both cheeks. 
 
 ' By the by, Martin — any message from my lady mother ? ' 
 
 ' None ! ' 
 
 ' Quite right and pious. I am an enemy to Holy Church and 
 therefore to her. Good-night, uncle.' 
 
 ' Hey ? ' asked Brand ; ' where is that footman— Martin you 
 call him ? I must liave another word with him.' 
 
 But Martin was gone. 
 
 ' No matter. I shall question him sharply enough to-morrow, 
 I warrant.' 
 
 And Hereward went out to his lodging : wliile the good prior 
 went to his prayers. 
 
 When Hereward entered his room, Martin started out of the 
 darkness, and followed liim in. Then he slmt to the door care- 
 fully, and pulled out a bag. 
 
 ' There was no message from my lady : but there was 
 this.' 
 
 The bag was full of money. 
 
 ' Why did you not tell me of tliis before 1 ' 
 
 ' Never show money before a monk.' 
 
 'Villain ! would you mistrust my uncle?' 
 
 'Any man witli a shaven crown. St. Peter is his God, and 
 Lord, and conscience ; and if he saw but the shine of a penny, 
 for St. Peter he would want it.' 
 
 'And he shall have it,' quoth Hereward ; and flung out of 
 the room, and into his uncle's. 
 
 ' Uncle, I have money. I have come to pay back what I took 
 D n. T. \v.
 
 34 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 from the steward, and as much more into tlie bargain.' And he 
 told out eight-and-thirty pieces. 
 
 ' Thank God and all his saints ! ' cried Brand, weeping 
 abundantly for joy ; for he had acquired, by long devotion, the 
 donum lachrymarum — that lachrymose and somewhat hysterical 
 temperament common among pious monks, and held to be a 
 mark of grace. 
 
 ' Blessed St. Peter, thou art repaid ; and thou wilt be 
 merciful.' 
 
 Brand believed, in common with all monks then, that Here- 
 ward had robbed, not merely the abbey of Peterborough, but 
 what was more, St. Peter himself ; thereby converting into an 
 implacable and internecine foe the chief of the Apostles, the 
 rock on which was founded the whole Church. 
 
 ' Now, uncle,' said Hereward, ' do me one good deed in return, 
 Promise me that, if you can help it, none of my poor house- 
 carles shall suffer for my sins. I led them into trouble. I am 
 punished. I have made i-estitution — at least to St. Peter. See 
 that my father and mother, if they be the Christians they call 
 themselves, forgive and forget all offences except mine.' 
 
 ' I will : so help me all saints and our Lord. O my boy, my 
 boy, thou shouldst have been a king's thane and not an 
 outlaw ! ' 
 
 And he hurried off with tlie news to the abbot. 
 
 When Hereward returned to his room, Martin was gone. 
 
 ' Farewell, good men of Peterborough,' said Hereward, as he 
 leapt into the saddle next morning. ' I had made a vow against 
 you, and came to try you, and see whether you would force me 
 to fultil it or not. But you have been so kind that I have half 
 repented thereof ; and the evil shall not come in the days 
 of Abbot Leofric, nor of Brand the prior, though it may come 
 in the days of Herluin the steward, if he live long enough.' 
 
 'What meanest thou, incarnate fiend, only fit to worship 
 Thor and Odin ? ' asked Brand. 
 
 ' That I would burn Goldenborough, and Herluin the steward 
 within it, ere I die. I fear I shall do it : I fear I must do it. 
 Ten years ago come Lammas Herluin bade light the peat-stalk 
 under me, do you recollect ? ' 
 
 ' And so he did, the hound ! ' quoth Brand. ' I had forgotten 
 that.' 
 
 ' Little Hereward never forgets foe or friend. Ever since, on 
 Lammas night — hold still, horse ! — I dream of fire and flame, 
 and of Goldenborough in the glare of it. If it is written in the 
 big book, happen it must ; if not, so much the betterfor Gold- 
 enborough, for it is a pretty place, and honest Englishmen in 
 it. Only see that thei^e be not too many Frenchmen crept in 
 when I come back, beside our French friend Herluin ; and see, 
 too, that there be not a peat-stalk handy at the Bolldyke-gate — 
 a word is enough to wise men like you. Good-bye ! '
 
 I HOW HEREWARD WAS OUTLAWED 35 
 
 ' God help thee, thou sinful boy ! ' said the abbot. 
 
 ' Hereward, Hereward ! Come back ! ' cried Brand. 
 
 But the boy had spurred his horse through the gateway, and 
 was far down the road. 
 
 'Leofric, my friend,' said Brand sadly, 'this is my sin, and no 
 man's else. And heavy penance will I do for it, till that lad 
 returns in peace.' 
 
 ' Your sin V 
 
 ' Mine, abbot. I persuaded his mother to send him hither to 
 be a monk. Alas ! alas ! How long will men try to be wiser 
 than He who maketh men 1 ' 
 
 ' I do not understand thee,' quoth the abbot. And no more 
 he did. 
 
 It was four o'clock on a May morning when Hereward set 
 out to see the world, with good armour on his back, good 
 weapon by his side, good horse between his knees, and — rare 
 luxury in those penniless, though otherwise plentiful days — 
 good money in his purse. What could a lad of eighteen want 
 more, who under the harsh family rule of those times had known 
 nothing of a father's, and but too little of a mother's, love ? He 
 rode away westward, avoiding, of course, Kesterven and Bourne. 
 Through Milton woods he rode, and lingered but one moment, 
 as he crossed the King Street at Castor Haughlands, to glance 
 up the straight Koman I'oad which led towards his home. 
 That led to the old world. He was going to the new ; and he 
 pricked his horse gaily on through Bainton woods, struck the 
 Ermine Street on Southorpe Heath, and so on towards the 
 Welland, little dreaming that on those open wolds a palace 
 would one day arise, beside which King Edward's new Hall at 
 Westminster would show but as a tything-barn ; and that the 
 great patriot who would build that palace would own, as his 
 birthplace, the very home from which Hereward flew that 
 day. 
 
 Over the Welland to Brig Casterton, where Dick Turpin 
 crossed in after times, like him avoiding Stamford town ; and 
 then up the Ermine Street, through primeval glades of mighty 
 oak and ash, with holly and thorn beneath, swarming with game, 
 which was as highly preserved then as now, under Canute's 
 severe forest laws. The yellow roes stood and stared at him 
 knee-deep in the young fern ; the pheasant called his hens out 
 to feed in the dewy grass ; the blackbird and tlirush sang out 
 from every bough ; the wood-lark trilled above the high oak 
 tops, and sank down on tliem as his song sank down. And 
 Hereward rode on, rejoicing in it all. It was a fine world in the 
 Bruneswald. What was it then outside ? Not to liim, as to us, 
 a world circular, round, circumscribed, mapped, botanised, 
 zoologised ; a tiny planet about which everybody knows, or 
 thinks they know, everything ; but a world infinite, magical, 
 supernatural — because unknown ; a vast flat plain reaching no
 
 36 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 one knew whence or where, save that the mountains stood on 
 tlie four corners thereof to keep it steady, and the four winds 
 of heaven blew out of them ; and in the centre, which was to 
 him the Bruneswakl, such things as he saw : but beyond, things 
 unspeakable — dragons, giants, rocs, ores, witcli-whales, griffins, 
 cliimeras, satyrs, enchanters, Paynims, Saracen Emirs and Sul- 
 tans, Kaisers of Constantinople, Kaisers of Ind and of Cathay, and 
 beyond them again of lands as yet unknown. At the very least 
 he could go to Brittany, to the forest of Brocheliaunde, where 
 (so all men said) fairies might be seen bathing in the fountains, 
 and possibly be won and wedded by a bold and dexterous 
 knight, after the fashion of Sir Gruelan.^ What was there not 
 to be seen and conquered ? Where would he go ? Where would 
 he not go ? For the spirit of Odin the Goer, the spirit which 
 has sent his children round the world, was strong within him. 
 He would go to Ireland, to the Ostmen, or Irish Danes, at 
 Dublin, Waterford, or Cork, and marry some beautiful Irish 
 princess with gray eyes, and raven locks, and saffron smock, and 
 great gold bracelets from her native hills. No ; he would go off 
 to the Orkneys, and join Bruce and Ranald, and the Vikings of 
 the northern seas, and all the hot blood which had found even 
 Norway too hot to hold it ; he would sail through witch-whales 
 and icebergs to Iceland and Greenland, and the sunny lands 
 which they said lay even beyond, across the all but unknown 
 ocean. Or he would go up the Baltic to the Jomsburg Vikings, 
 and fight against Lett and Esthonian heathen, and pierce inland, 
 perhaps, through Puleyn and the bison forests, to the land from 
 whence came the magic swords and the old Persian coins which 
 he had seen so often in the halls of his forefathers. No ; he 
 would go south, to the land of sun and wine ; and see the magi- 
 cians of Cordova and Seville ; and beard Mussulman hounds 
 worshipping their Mahomets ; and perhaps bring home an 
 Emir's daughter, 
 
 ' With more gay gold about her middle, 
 Than would buy half Northumberlee. ' 
 
 Or he would go up the Straits, and on to Constantinople and 
 the great Kaiser of the Greeks, and join the Varanger Guard, 
 and perhaps, like Harold Hardraade in his own days, after being 
 cast to the lion for carrying off a fair Greek lady, tear out the 
 monster's tongue with his own hands, and show the Easterns 
 what a Viking's son could do. And as he dreamed of the infinite 
 world, and its infinite wonders, the enchanters he might meet, 
 the jewels he might find, the adventui'es he might essay, he held 
 that he must succeed in all, with hope, and wit, and a strong 
 
 ^ Wace, author of the Roman dc Rou, ■went to Brittany a generation 
 later, to see those same fairies ; but had no sport, and sang — 
 ' Fol i alai, fol m'en revins ; 
 Fohe quis, por fol me tins.'
 
 I HOW HEREWARD WAS OUTLAWED 37 
 
 arm ; and forgot altogether that, mixed up with the cosmogony 
 of an infinite flat plain called the earth, there was joined also 
 the belief in a flat roof above called heaven, on which (seen at 
 times in visions through clouds and stars) sat saints, angels, and 
 archangels, for ever more harj^ing on their golden harps, and 
 knowing neither vanity nor vexation of spirit, lust nor pride, 
 murder nor war ; and underneath a floor, the name whereof was 
 hell ; the mouths whereof (as all men knew) might be seen on 
 Hecla, Etna, and Stromboli ; and the fiends heard within, tor- 
 menting, amid fire, and smoke, and clanking chains, the souls of 
 the endlessly lost. 
 
 As he i-ode on, slowly though cheerfully, as a man who will 
 not tire his horse at the beginning of a long day's journey, and 
 knows not where he shall pass the night, he was aware of a man 
 on foot coming up behind him at a slow, steady, loping, wolf- 
 like trot, which in spite of its slowness gained ground on him so 
 fast, that he saw at once that the man could be no common 
 runner. 
 
 The man came ujd ; and behold, he was none other than 
 Martin Lightfoot. 
 
 'What! art thou here?' asked Hereward suspiciously, and 
 half cross at seeing any visitor from the old world which he had 
 just cast ofi". ' How gottest thou out of St. Peter's last 
 night?' 
 
 Martin's tongue was hanging out of his mouth like a running 
 hound's ; but he seemed, like a hound, to perspire through his 
 mouth ; for he answered without the least sign of distress, with- 
 out even pulling in his tongue. 
 
 ' Over the wall, the moment the prior's back was turned. I 
 was not going to wait till I was chained up in some rat's hole 
 with a half-hundred of iron on my leg, and flogged till I con- 
 fessed that I was what I am not — a runaway monk.' 
 
 ' And why art here ? ' 
 
 ' Because I am going with you.' 
 
 'Going with me?' said Hereward. 'What can I do for 
 thee?' 
 
 ' I can do for you,' said Martin. 
 
 'What?' 
 
 'Groom your horse, wash your shirt, clean your weapons, find 
 your inn, fight your enemies, cheat your friends — anything and 
 everything. You are going to see the world. I am going with 
 you.' 
 
 ' Thou canst be my servant ? A right slippery one, I expect,' 
 said Hereward, looking down on him witli some suspicion. 
 
 ' Some are not the rogues they seem. I can keep my secrets 
 and yours too.' 
 
 ' Before I can trust thee with my secrets, I shall expect to 
 know some of tliine,' said Hereward. 
 
 Martin Lightfoot looked up with a cunning smile. ' A man
 
 38 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 can always know his master's secrets if he likes. But that is no 
 reason a master should know his man's.' 
 
 ' Thou shalt tell me thine, man, or I shall ride off and leave 
 thee.' 
 
 'Not so easy, my lord. Where that heavy horse can go, 
 Martin Lightfoot can follow. But I will tell you one secret, 
 which I never told to living man. I can read and write like any 
 clerk.' 
 
 ' Thou read and write 1 ' 
 
 ' Ay, good Latin enough, and French, and Irish too, what is 
 more. And now, because I love you, and because you I will 
 serve, willy nilly, I will tell you all the secrets I have, as long 
 as my breath lasts, for my tongue is rather stiff after that long 
 story about the bell-wether. I was born in Ireland, in Water- 
 foi'd town. My mother was an English slave, one of those that 
 Earl Godwin's wife — not this one that is now, Gyda, but the old 
 one — used to sell out of England by the score, tied together with 
 ropes, boys and girls from Bristol town.-' Her master, my father 
 that was (I shall know him again), got tired of her, and wanted 
 to give her away to one of his kernes. She would not have that ; 
 so he hung her up hand and foot, and beat her that she died. 
 There was an abbey hard by, and the Church laid on him a 
 penance — all that they dared get out of him — that he should 
 give me to the monks, being then a seven-years' boy. Well, I 
 grew up in that abbey ; they taught me my fa fa mi fa ; but 
 I liked better conning ballads and hearing stories of ghosts and 
 enchanters, such as I used to tell you. I'll tell you plenty more 
 whenever you're tired. Then they made me work ; and that I 
 never could abide at all. Then they beat me every day ; and 
 that I could abide still less ; but always I stuck to my book, for 
 one tiling I saw — that learning is power, my lord ; and that the 
 reason why the monks are masters of the land is, they are 
 scholars, and you fighting men are none. Then I fell in love (as 
 young blood will) with an Irish lass, when I was full seventeen 
 years old ; and when they found out that, they held me down 
 on the floor and beat me till I was well-nigh dead. They jjut 
 me in prison for a month ; and between bread-and-water and 
 darkness I went nigh foolish. They let me out, thinking I could 
 do no more harm to man or lass ; and when I found out how 
 profitable folly was, foolish I remained, at least as foolish as 
 seemed good to me. But one night I got into the abbey church, 
 stole tlierefrom that which I have with me now, and which shall 
 serve you and me in good stead yet— out and away aboard a 
 ship among the buscarles, and off into the Norway sea. But 
 after a voyage or two, so it befell, I was wrecked in the Wash 
 
 1 I adopt "William of Malmesbury's old story, thougli there is no good 
 authority for it. Even if a calumny, it fits the mouth of an adherent of 
 the house of Leofric ; and an English slave-trade certainly was carried on 
 in those days.
 
 I HOW HEREWARD WAS OUTLAWED 39 
 
 by Botulfston Deeps, and begging my way inland, met with 
 your father, and took service with him, as I have taken service 
 now with you.' 
 
 ' Now, what has made thee take service with meV 
 ' Because you are you.' 
 
 ' Give me none of thy parables and dark sayings, but speak 
 out like a man. What canst see in me that thou shouldest share 
 an outlaw's fortune with me 1 ' 
 
 ' I had run away from a monastery ; so had you. I hated the 
 monks ; so did you. I liked to tell stories — since I found good 
 to shut my mouth I tell them to myself all day long, sometimes 
 all night too. When I found out you liked to hear them, I loved 
 you all the more. Then they told me not to speak to you ; I 
 held my tongue. I bided my time. T knew you would be out- 
 lawed some day. I knew you would turn Viking and kempery- 
 man, and kill giants and enchanters, and win yourself honour 
 and glory ; and I knew I should have my share in it. I knew 
 you would need me some day ; and you need me now, and here 
 I am ; and if you try to cut me down with your sword, I will 
 dodge you, and follow you, and dodge you again, till I force you 
 to let me be your man. I never loved you as I do now. You 
 let me take that letter safe, like a true hero. You let your- 
 self be outlawed, like a true hero. You made up your mind to 
 see the world, like a true hero. You are the master for me, and 
 with you I will live and die. And now I can talk no more.' 
 
 'And with me thou shalt live and die,' said Hereward, pull- 
 ing up his horse, and frankly holding out his hand to his new 
 friend. 
 
 Martin Lightfoot took his hand, kissed it, licked it almost, 
 as a dog would have done. ' I am your man,' he said, ' amen ; 
 and true man I will prove to you, if you will prove true to me.' 
 And he dropped quietly back behind Hereward's horse, as if the 
 business of his life was settled, and his mind utterly at rest. 
 
 ' There is one more likeness between us,' said Hereward, after 
 a few minutes' thought. ' If I have robbed a church,_ thou hast 
 robbed one too. What is this precious spoil which is to serve 
 me and thee in such mighty stead V 
 
 Martin drew from inside his shirt and under his waistband a 
 small battle-axe, and handed it up to Hereward. It was a tool 
 the like of which in shape Hereward had seldom seen, and never 
 its equal in beauty. The handle was some fifteen inches long, 
 made of thick strips of black whalebone, curiously bound witli 
 silver, and butted with narwhal ivory. This handle was evi- 
 dently the work of some cunning Norseman of old. But who 
 had been the maker of the blade? It was some eight inches 
 long, with a sharp edge on one side, a sharp crooked pick on the 
 other ; of the finest steel, inlaid with strange characters in gold, 
 the work probably of some Circassian, Tartar, or Persian ; such 
 a battle-axe as Kustum or Zohrab may have wielded in fight
 
 40 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 on the banks of Oxus ; one of those magic weapons, brought, 
 men know not how, out of the magic East, which were heredi- 
 taiy in many a Norse family, and sung of in many a Norse 
 saga. 
 
 ' Look at it,' said Martin Lightfoot. ' There is magic in it. 
 It must bring us luck. Whoever liolds tliat must kill his man. 
 It will pick a lock of steel. It will crack a mail corselet as a 
 nut-hatch cracks a nut. It will hew a lance in two at a single 
 blow. Devils and spirits forged it — I know that ; Virgilius the 
 Enchanter, perhaps, or Solomon the Great, or whosoever's name 
 is on it, graven there in letters of gold. Handle it, feel its 
 balance ; but no — do not handle it too much. There is a devil 
 in it, who would make you kill me. Whenever I play with it I 
 long to kill a man. It would be so easy — so easy. Give it me 
 back, my lord, give it me back, lest the devil come through the 
 handle into your palm, and possess you.' 
 
 Hereward laughed, and gave him back his battle-axe. But 
 he had hardly less doubt of the magic virtues of such a blade 
 than had Martin himself. 
 
 ' Magical or not, thou wilt not have to hit a man twice with 
 that, Martin, my lad. So we two outlaws are both well armed ; 
 and having neither wife nor child, land nor beeves to lose, ought 
 to be a match for any six honest men who may have a grudge 
 against us, and yet have sound reasons at home for running 
 away.' 
 
 And so those two went northward through the green Brunes- 
 wald, and northward through merry Sherwood, and were not 
 seen in that land again for many a year. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 HOW HEREWARD SLEW THE BEAR.^ 
 
 Of Hereward's doings for the next few months nought is known. 
 He may very likely have joined Si ward in the Scotch war. He 
 may have looked, wondering, for the first time in his life, upon 
 
 ^ This story of the bear is likely not to be a myth, but among the most 
 authentic of Hereward's famous deeds. So likewise is the story of the 
 Cornish princess, and of his deeds in Flanders. For Richard of Ely, if I 
 understand him rightly, says that he got his information from the actual 
 MSS. of Leofric of Bourne, Hereward's mass-priest, 'up to the place 
 where he came liome again ; ' and more wise than the average of monk 
 writers, kept to ' the crude matter, too little composite and ornate by the 
 care of any trained intellect, or by dialectic and rhetoric enigmas.' For 
 ' always he was deluded by vain hope, or from the beginning, by folks say- 
 ing that in this place and that is a great book about the same man's deeds,' 
 which book never appearing, he seems to have finished his work from 
 popular tradition, leaving, to do him justice, the dialectic and rhetorical
 
 II HOW HEKEWARD SLEW THE BEAR 41 
 
 the bones of the old world, wliei-e they rise at Dunkeld out of 
 the lowlands of the Tay ; and have trembled lest the black crags 
 of Birnam should topple on his head with all their pines. He 
 may have marched down from that famous leaguer with the 
 Gospatrics and Dolphins, and the rest of the kindred of Crinan, 
 and of Siward, of the murdered Duncan, and the outraged 
 Sibilla. He may liave helped himself to bring Birnam Wood to 
 Dunsinane, on the day of the Seven Sleepers, and heard Siward, 
 when his son Asbiorn's corpse was carried into camp,^ ask only, 
 ' Has he all his wounds in front ? ' He may have seen old 
 Siward, after Macbeth's defeat (not death, as Shakespeare re- 
 lates the story), go back to Northumbria ' with such booty as 
 no man had obtained before,' a proof — if the fact be fact — that 
 the Scotch lowlands were not, in the eleventh century, the poor 
 and barbarous country which some have reported them to have 
 been. 
 
 All this is not only possible, but probable enough, the dates 
 considered : the chroniclers, however, are silent. They only 
 say that Hereward was in those days beyond Northumberland 
 witli Gilbert of Ghent. 
 
 Gisebert, Gislebert, Gilbert, Guibert, Goisbricht, of Ghent,^ 
 who afterwards owned, by chance of war, many a fair manor in 
 Lincolnshire and elsewhere, was one of those valiant Flemings 
 who settled along the east and north-east coast of Scotland in the 
 eleventh century. They fought with the Celtic Maolmors, and 
 tlien married with their daughters ; got to themselves lands by 
 the title-deed of the sword ; and so became — the famous Freskin 
 the Fleming especially — the ancestors of the finest aristocracy, 
 both physically and intellectually, in the world. They had their 
 connections, moreover, with the Norman court of Eouen, through 
 the Duchess Matilda, daughter of tlieir old Seigneur, Baldwin 
 Marquis of Flanders ; their connections, too, witli the English 
 Court, through Countess Judith, wife of Earl Tosti Godwinsson, 
 another daughter of Baldwin's. Their friendship was sought, 
 their enmity feared, far and wide throughout the north. They 
 seem to have been, with the instinct of true Flemings, civilisers, 
 and cultivators, and traders, as well as conquerors ; they were 
 in those very days bringing to order and tillage the rich lands 
 
 enigmas to be added by the author of tlio Lihcr Elicnsis ; but, like him, 
 wandering sadly in his chronology. I have retained every detail, I be- 
 lieve, which he gives in the early part of his story, as valuable and all but 
 unique sketches of the manners of the eleventh century. 
 
 ' Shakespeare calls his son ' young Siward.' He, too, was slain in the 
 l)attle ; but he was old Siward's nephew. 
 
 - Our English genealogists make him son of Baldwin of Mons and 
 Richilda of Hainault, which is a manifest error. Mr. Forester, in his 
 learned notes to Ordericus Vltalis, says that he was son of Ralf, the Lord 
 of Alost ; and confirms the story that his eldest son died prematurely. 
 He may have been nevertheless a near relation of the Marquis Baldwin.
 
 42 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 of the north-east, from the Firth of Moray to that of Forth ; 
 and forming a ramjjart for tScotland against the invasions of 
 Sweyn, Hardraade, and all the wild Vikings of the northern 
 seas. 
 
 Amongst them, in those days, Gilbert of Ghent seems to have 
 been a notable personage, to judge from the great house vs^hich 
 he kept, and the ' milites tyrones,' or squires in training for the 
 honour of knighthood, vi^ho fed at his table. Where he lived, 
 the chroniclers report not. To them the country 'ultra 
 Northumbriam,' beyond the Forth, was as Russia or Cathay, 
 where 
 
 ' Geographers on pathless downs 
 Put elephants for want of towns.' 
 
 As indeed it was to that French map-maker who, as late as the 
 middle of the eighteenth century (not having been to Aberdeen 
 or Elgin), leaves all the country north of the Tay a blank, with 
 the inscription : — ' Terre inculte et sauvage, habitee par les Hig- 
 landers! 
 
 Whei'ever Gilbert lived, however, he heard that Hereward 
 was outlawed, and sent for him, says the story,^ having, it would 
 seem, some connection with his father. And there he lived, 
 doubtless happily enough, fighting Celts and hunting deer, so 
 that as yet the pains and penalties of exile did not press very 
 hardly upon him. The handsome, petulant, good-humoured lad 
 had become in a few weeks the darling of Gilbert's ladies, and 
 the envy of all his knights and gentlemen. Hereward the 
 .singer, harp-player, dancer, Hereward the rider and hunter, was 
 in all moutlis : but he himself was discontented at having as yet 
 fallen in with no adventure worthy of a man ; and he looked 
 curiously and longingly at the menagerie of wild beasts enclosed 
 in strong wooden cages, which Gilbert kept in one corner of the 
 great courtyard, not for any scientific purposes, but to try with 
 them, at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, the mettle of the 
 young gentlemen who were candidates for the honour of knight- 
 hood. But after looking over the bulls and stags, wolves and 
 bears, Hereward settled it in his mind that there was none 
 worthy of his steel, save one huge white bear, whom no man 
 had yet dared to face, and whom Hereward, indeed, had never 
 seen, hidden as he was all day within the old oven-shaped Pict's 
 house of stone, which had been turned into his den. There was 
 a mystery about the uncanny brute which charmed Hereward. 
 He was said to be half-human, perhaps wholly human ; to be a 
 son of the Fairy Bear, near kinsman, if not brother, uncle, or 
 cousin, of Si ward Digre himself. He had, like his fairy father, 
 
 ^ Richard of Ely gives as the reason — ' pro illo misit : filiolus enim erat 
 divitis illius.' 'Filiolus' may be presumed to mean godson in the 
 vocabulary of that good monk : but it is not clear of whom he speaks as 
 ' dives ille.' Possibly Gilbert of Ghent was godson of Hereward's father.
 
 ir HOW HEREWARD SLEW THE BEAR 43 
 
 iron claws; he had human intellect, and understood human 
 speech, and the arts of war, — at least so all in the place believed, 
 and not as absurdly as at first sight seems. 
 
 For the brown bear, and much more the white, was, among 
 the Northern nations, in himself a creature magical and super- 
 human. ' He is God's dog,' whispered the Lapp, and called him 
 'the old man in the fur cloak,' afraid to use his right name, 
 even inside the tent, for fear of his overhearing and avenging 
 the insult. ' He has twelve men's strength, and eleven men's 
 wit,' sang the Norseman, and prided himself accordingly, like a 
 true Norseman, on outwitting and slaying the enchanted 
 monster. 
 
 Terrible was the brown bear : but more terrible ' the white 
 sea-deer,' as the Saxons called him ; the hound of Hrymir, the 
 whale's bane, the seal's dread, the rider of the iceberg, the sailor 
 of the floe, who ranged for his prey under the six months' night, 
 lighted by Surtur's fires, even to the gates of Muspelheim. To 
 slay him was a feat worthy of Beowulf's self ; and the greatest 
 wonder, perhaps, among all the wealth of Crowland, was the 
 twelve white bear-skins which lay before the altars, the gift of 
 the great Canute. _ How Gilbert had obtained his white bear, 
 and why he kept him there in durance vile, was a mystery over 
 which men shook their heads. Again and again Hereward 
 asked his host to let him try his strength against the monster of 
 the North. Again and again the shrieks of the ladies, and 
 Gilbert's own pity for the stripling youth, brought a refusal. 
 But Hereward settled it in his heart, nevertheless, that somehow 
 or other, when Christmas time came round, he woukl extract 
 from Gilbert, drunk or sober, leave to fight that bear ; and then 
 either make himself a name, or die like a man. 
 
 Meanwhile Herewaixl made a friend. Among all the ladies 
 of Gilbert's household, however kind they were inclined to be to 
 him, he took a fancy only to one— a little girl of ten years old. 
 Alftruda was her name. He liked to amuse himself with this 
 cliild, without, as he fancied, any danger of falling in love ; for 
 already his dreams of love were of the highest and most fan- 
 tastic ; and an Emir's daughter, or a Princess of Constantinople, 
 were the very lowest game at which he meant to fly. Alftruda 
 was beautiful, too, exceedingly, and precocious, and, it may be, 
 vain enough to repay his attentions in good earnest. More- 
 over she was English, as he was, and royal likewise ; a relation 
 of Elfgiva, daughter of Ethelred, once King of England. Slie, 
 as all know, married Uclitred, Prince of Northumberland, the 
 grandfather of Gospatrick, Earl of Nortliumberland, and 
 ancestor of all tlie I)unbars.i Between the English lad, then, 
 and the English maiden grew up in a few weeks an innocent 
 friendsliip, whicli had almost become more than friendship, 
 through the intervention of the Fairy Bear. 
 
 ^ See note at end of chapter.
 
 44 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 For as Hereward was coming in one afternoon from hunting, 
 hawk on fist, Avith Martin Lightfoot trotting behind, crane and 
 heron, duck and hare, slung over his shoulder, on reaching the 
 courtyard gates he was aware of screams and siiouts within, 
 tumult and terror among man and beast. Hereward tried to 
 force his horse in at the gate. The beast stopped and turned, 
 snorting with fear ; and no wonder ; for in the midst of the 
 courtyard stood the Fairy Bear ; his white mane bristled up till 
 he seemed twice as big as any of the sober brown bears which 
 Hereward yet had seen : his long snake neck and cruel visage 
 wreathing about in search of prey. A dead horse, its back 
 broken by a single blow of the paw, and two or three writhing 
 dogs, showed that the beast had turned (like too many of his 
 human kindred in those days) ' Berserker.' The courtyard was 
 utterly emjoty : but from the ladies' bower came shrieks and 
 shouts, not only of women but of men ; and knocking at the 
 bower door, adding her screams to those inside, was a little 
 white figure, which Hereward recognised as Alftruda's. They 
 had barricaded themselves inside, leaving the child out ; and 
 now dared not ojDen the door, as the bear swung and rolled 
 towards it, looking savagely right and left for a fresh victim. 
 
 Hereward leaped from his horse, and drawing his sword, 
 rushed forward with a shout which made the bear turn round. 
 
 He looked once back at the child ; then round again at Hei'e- 
 ward : and making up his mind to take the largest morsel first, 
 made straight at him with a growl which there was no mis- 
 taking. 
 
 He was within two paces ; then he rose on his hind legs, a 
 head and shoulders taller than Hereward, and lifted the iron 
 talons high in air. Hereward knew that there was but one spot 
 at which to strike ; and he struck true and strong, before the 
 iron paw could fall, right on the muzzle of the monster. 
 
 He heard the dull crash of the steel ; he felt the sword jammed 
 tight. He shut his eyes for an instant, fearing lest, as in 
 dreams, his blow had come to nought ; lest his sword had turned 
 aside, or melted like water in his hand, and the next moment 
 would find him crushed to earth, blinded and stunned. Some- 
 thing tugged at his sword. He opened his eyes, and saw the 
 huge carcase bend, reel, roll slowly over to one side, dead, tearing 
 out of his hand the sword which was firmly fixed into the skull. 
 
 Hereward stood awhile staring at the beast like a man 
 astonied at what he himself had done. He had had his first 
 adventure, and he had conquered. He was now a champion in 
 his own right — a hero of the heroes — one who might take rank, 
 if he went on, beside Beowulf, Frotho, Ragnar Lodbrog, or 
 Harold Hardraade. He had done this deed. What was tliere 
 after this wliich he might not do ? And he stood there in the 
 fulness of his jiride, defiant of earth and heaven, while in his 
 heart arose the thought of that old Viking who cried, in the
 
 II HOW HEREWARD SLEW THE BEAR 45 
 
 pride of liis godlessness, 'I never on earth met him whom I 
 feared, and why shoukl I fear him in heaven ? If I met Odin I 
 would fight with Odin. If Odin were the stronger he would slay 
 me : if I were the stronger I would slay him.' There he stood, 
 staring, and dreaming over renown to come, a true pattern of 
 the half -savage hero of those rough times, capable of all vices 
 except cowardice, and capable, too, of all virtues save humility. 
 
 ' Do you not see,' said Alartin Lightfoot's voice close by, ' that 
 there is a fair lady trying to thank you, while you are so rude 
 or so proud that you will not vouchsafe her one look ? ' 
 
 It was true. Little Alftruda had been clinging to him for 
 five minutes past. He took the child up in his arms and kissed 
 her with pure kisses, which for a moment softened his hard 
 heart ; then setting her down, he turned to Martin. 
 
 'I have done it, Martin.' 
 
 ' Yes, you have done it ; I spied you. What will the old folks 
 at home say to this ? ' 
 
 'What care I r _ _ _ ^ 
 
 Martin Lightfoot shook his head, and drew out liis knife. 
 
 ' Wliat is that for 1 ' said Hereward. 
 
 ' When the master kills the game, the knave can but skin it. 
 We may sleep warm under this fur in many a cold night by sea 
 and moor.' 
 
 ' Nay,' said Hereward, laughing ; ' when tlie master kills the 
 game, he must first carry it home. Let us take him and set him 
 up against the bower door there, to astonish the brave knights 
 inside.' And stooping down, he attemjDted to lift the huge car- 
 case : but in vain. At last, with ]\lartin's help, he got it fairly 
 on his shoulders, and the two dragged their burden to the 
 bower, and dashed it against the door, shouting with all their 
 might to those witliin to open it. 
 
 Windows, it must be remembered, were in those days so few 
 and far between, that the folks inside had remained quite 
 unaware of what was going on without. 
 
 The door was opened cautiously enough ; and out looked, to 
 the shame of knighthood, be it said, two or three knights who 
 had taken shelter in the bower with the ladies. Whatever tliey 
 were going to say the ladies forestalled, for, rushing out across 
 the prostrate bear, they overwhelmed Hereward with praises, 
 thanks, and, after tlie straightforward custom of those days, 
 with substantial kisses. 
 
 'You must be knighted at once,' cried they. 'You have 
 knighted yourself l)y that single blow.' 
 
 'A pity then,' said one of the kniglits to the others, 'that lie 
 had not given that accolade to himself, instead of to the bear.' 
 
 ' Unless some means are found,' said another, ' of taking down 
 this boy's conceit, life will soon be not worth liaving here.' 
 
 'Either he must take ship,' said a third, 'and look for adven- 
 tures elsewhere, or I must.'
 
 46 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 iMartin Lightfoot heard those words ; and knowing that envy 
 and hatred, like all other vices in those rough-hewn times, were 
 apt to take very startling and unmistakable shapes, kept his eye 
 accordingly on those three knights. 
 
 ' He must be knighted — he shall be knighted, as soon as Sir 
 Gilbert comes home,' said all the ladies in chorus. 
 
 ' I should be sorry to think,' said Hereward, with the blunder- 
 ing mock humility of a self-conceited boy, ' that I had done any- 
 thing worthy of such an honour. I hope to win my spurs by 
 greater feats than these.' 
 
 A burst of laughter from the knights and gentlemen followed. 
 
 ' How loud the young cockerel crows after his first scufile ! ' 
 
 ' Hark to him ! Wliat will he do next ? Eat a dragon ? Fly 
 to the moon 1 Marry the Sophy of Egypt's daughter 1 ' 
 
 This last touched Hereward to the quick, for it was just what 
 he thought of doing ; and his blood, heated enough already, beat 
 quicker, as some one cried, with the evident intent of picking a 
 quarrel : 
 
 ' That was meant for us. If the man who killed the bear has 
 not deserved knighthood, what must we have deserved, who 
 have not killed him ? You understand his meaning, gentlemen 
 — do not forget it ! ' 
 
 Hereward looked down, and setting his foot on the bear's 
 head, wrenched out of it the sword, which he had left till now, 
 with pardonable pride, fast set in the skull. 
 
 Martin Lightfoot, for his part, drew stealthily from his bosom 
 the little magic axe, keeping his eye on the brain-pan of the 
 last speaker. 
 
 The lady of the house cried ' Shame ! ' and ordered the knights 
 away with haughty words and gestures, which, because they 
 were so well deserved, only made the quarrel more deadly. 
 
 Then she commanded Hereward to sheathe his sword. 
 
 He did so ; and, turning to the knights, said with all courtesy, 
 ' You mistake me, sirs. You were where brave knights should 
 be, within the beleaguered fortress, defending the ladies. Had 
 you remained outside, and been eaten by the bear, what must 
 have befallen them, had he burst open the door ? As for this 
 little lass, whom you left outside, she is too young to requite 
 knight's prowess by lady's love ; and therefore beneath your 
 attention, and only fit for the care of a boy like me.' And tak- 
 ing up Alftruda in his arms, he carried her in and disappeared. 
 Wlio now but Hereward was in all men's mouths ? The 
 minstrels made ballads on him ; the lasses sang his praises (says 
 the chronicler) as they danced upon the green. Gilbert's lady 
 would need give him the seat, and all the honours, of a belted 
 knight, though knight he was none. And daily and weekly the 
 valiant lad grew and hardened into a valiant man, and a 
 courteous one withal, giving no ofience himself, and not over 
 ready to take ofience at other men.
 
 II HOW HEREWARD SLEW THE BEAR 47 
 
 The knights were civil enough to him, the ladies more than 
 civil ; he hunted, he wrestled, he tilted ; he was pi'omised a 
 chance of fighting for glory, as soon as a Highland chief should 
 declare war against Gilbert, or drive off his cattle — an event 
 which (and small blame to the Highland chiefs) happened every 
 six months. 
 
 No one was so well content with himself as Hereward ; and 
 therefore he fancied that the world must be equally content 
 with him ; and he was much disconcerted when Martin drew 
 him aside one day, and whispered — 
 
 ' If I were my lord, I should wear a mail shirt under my coat 
 to-morrow out hunting.' 
 
 'What?' 
 
 ' The arrow that can go through a deer's blade-bone can go 
 through a man'.s.' 
 
 ' Who should harm me ? ' 
 
 'Any man of the dozen who eat at the same table.' 
 
 'What have I done to them? If I had my laugh at them, 
 they had their laugh at me ; and we are quits.' 
 
 ' There is another score, my lord, which you have forgotten, 
 and' that is all on your side.' 
 
 'Eh?' 
 
 'You killed the bear. Do you expect them to forgive you 
 that, till they have repaid you with interest ? ' 
 
 'Pish!' 
 
 'You do not want for wit, my lord. Use it, and think. 
 What right has a little boy like you to come here, killing bears 
 which grown men cannot kill ? What can you expect but just 
 punishment for your insolence — say, a lance between your 
 shoulders while you stoop to drink, as Sigfried had for daring 
 to tame Brunhild? And more, what right have you to come 
 here, and so win the hearts of the ladies, that the lady of all the 
 ladies should say, " If aught happen to my poor boy — and he 
 cannot live long — I would adopt Hereward for my own son, and 
 show his mother what a fool some folks think her." So, my lord, 
 put on your mail shirt to-morrow, and take care of narrow ways 
 and sharp corners. For to-morrow it will be tried, that I know, 
 before my Lord Gilbert comes back fi-om the Highlands : but 
 by whom, I know not, and care little, seeing that there are 
 half a dozen in the house who would be glad enough of the 
 chance.' 
 
 Hereward took his advice, and rode out with three or four 
 knights the next morning into the fir-forest ; not afraid, but 
 angry and .sad. He was not yet old enough to estimate the 
 virulence of envy ; to take ingratitude and treachery for 
 granted. He was to learn the lesson then, as a wholesome 
 chastener to the pride of success. He was to learn it again in 
 later years, as an additional bitterness in the humiliation of 
 defeat ; and find out that if a man once fall, or seem to fall, a
 
 48 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 hundred curs spring up to bark at liim, who dared not open 
 their mouths while he was on his legs. 
 
 So they rode into the forest, and parted, each with his foot- 
 man and his dogs, in search of boar and deer ; and each had his 
 sport without meeting again for some two hours or more. 
 
 Hereward and Martin came at last to a narrow gully, a mur- 
 derous place enough. Huge fir-trees roofed it in, and made a 
 night of noon. High banks of earth and great boulders walled 
 it in right and left for twenty feet above. The track, what 
 with pack-horses' feet, and what with the wear and tear of five 
 Imndred years' rainfall, was a rut three feet deep and two feet 
 broad, in which no horse could turn. Any other day Hereward 
 would have cantered down it with merely a tightened rein. 
 To-day he turned to Martin, and said — 
 
 ' A very fit and proper place for this same treason : unless 
 thou hast been drinking beer and thinking beer.' 
 
 But Martin was nowhere to be seen. 
 
 A pebble thrown from the right bank struck him, and he 
 looked up. Martin's face was peering through the heather 
 overhead, his finger on his lips. Then he pointed cautiously, 
 first up the pass, then down. 
 
 Hereward felt that his sword was loose in the sheath, and 
 then gripped his lance, with a heart beating, but not with 
 fear. 
 
 The next moment he heard the rattle of a horse's hoofs behind 
 him, looked back, and saw a knight charging desperately down 
 the gully, his bow in hand, and arrow drawn to the head. 
 
 To turn was impossible. To stop, even to walk on, was to be 
 ridden over and hurled to the ground helplessly. To gain the 
 mouth of the gully, and then tvirn on his pursuer, was his only 
 chance. For the first and almost the last time in his life, he 
 struck spurs into his horse, and ran away. As he went, an 
 arrow struck him sharply in the back, piercing the corslet, but 
 hardly entering the flesh. As he neared the mouth, two other 
 knigJits crashed their horses through the brushwood from right 
 and left, and stood awaiting him, their spears ready to strike. 
 He was caught in a trap. A shield might have saved him ; but 
 he had none. 
 
 He did not flinch. Dropping his reins, and driving in the 
 spurs once more, he met them in full shock. With his left hand 
 he thrust aside the left-hand lance, with his right he hurled his 
 own with all his force at the right-hand foe, and saw it pass 
 clean through the felon's chest, while his lance-point dropped, 
 and passed harmlessly. 
 
 So much for lances in front. But the knight behind 1 Would 
 not his sword the next moment be through his brain ? 
 
 There was a clatter, a crash, and looking back, Hereward saw 
 horse and man rolling in the rut, and rolling with them Martin 
 Lightfoot. He had already pinned the knight's head against
 
 II HOW HEREWARD SLEW THE BEAR 49 
 
 the steep bank, and, with uplifted axe, "was meditating a pick 
 at his face which would have stopped alike his love-making and 
 his fighting. 
 
 ' Hold thy hand,' shouted Hereward. ' Let us see who he is ; 
 and remember that he is at least a knight.' 
 
 ' But one that will ride no more to-day. I finished his horse's 
 going as I rolled down the bank.' 
 
 It was true. He had broken the poor beast's leg with a blow 
 of the axe, and they had to kill the horse out of pity ere they 
 left. 
 
 Martin dragged his prisoner forward. 
 
 ' You ? ' cried Hereward. ' And I saved your life three days 
 ago !' 
 
 The knight answered nothing. 
 
 'You will have to walk home. Let that be punishment 
 enough for you.' And he turned. 
 
 ' He will have to ride in a woodman's cart, if he have the luck 
 to find one.' 
 
 The third knight had fled, and after him the dead man's 
 horse. Hereward and his man rode home in peace, and the 
 wounded man, after trying vainly to walk a mile or two, fell 
 and lay, and was fain to fulfil Martin's prophecy, and be brought 
 home in a cart, to carry for years after, like Sir Lancelot, the 
 nickname of the Chevalier de la Charette. 
 
 And so was Hereward avenged of his enemies ; and began to 
 win for himself the famous soubriquet of ' Wake ' ; the Watcher, 
 whom no man ever took unawares. Judicial, even private, 
 inquiry into the matter there was none. That gentlemen 
 should meet in the forest, try to commit murder on each other's 
 bodies, was rather too common a mishap to stir up more than 
 an extra gossiping among the women, and an extra cursing 
 among the men ; and as the former were all on Hereward's 
 side, his plain story was taken as it stood. 
 
 'And now, fair lady,' said Hereward to his hostess, 'I must 
 thank you for your hospitality, and bid you farewell for ever 
 and a day.' 
 
 She wept, and entreated him only to stay till her lord came 
 back : but Hereward was firm. 
 
 ' You, lady, and your good lord will I ever love ; and at your 
 service my sword shall ever be : but not here. Ill blood I will 
 not make. Among traitors I will not dwell. I have killed two 
 of them, and shall have to kill two of tlieir kinsmen next, and 
 tlien two more, till you have no knights left ; and pity that 
 would be. No ; the world is wide, and there are plenty of good 
 fellows in it who will welcome me without forcing me to wear 
 mail under my coat out hunting.' 
 
 And he armed himself cap-a-pie, and rode away. Great was 
 tlie weeping in the bower, and great the cliuckling in tlie hall : 
 but never saw they Hereward again upon the Scottish shore. 
 
 E II. T. AV.
 
 50 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 NOTE 
 
 I insert on the following page the pedigree of Gospatric and the Dun- 
 bars, with many thanks to the gallant Dunbar to whom I owe the greater 
 part thereof. It illustrates that connection between the royal houses of 
 Scotland and of England which influenced so much the course of the Nor- 
 man Conquest. The singular name Gospatric, or Gospatric, is, it should 
 be remembered, remarkable, as perhaps the earliest instance of an hered- 
 itary name. I anr sorry to say that Scottish antiquaries can as yet throw 
 no light on its etymology.
 
 II 
 
 HOW HEREWARD SLEW THE BEAR 
 
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 52 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 HOW HEREWAET) SUCCOURED A PRINCESS OP CORNWALL 
 
 The next place in which Hereward appeared was far away on 
 the south-west, upon the Cornish shore. He went into port on 
 board a merchant ship carrying wine, and intending to bring 
 back tin. The merchants had told him of one ' Alef,'^ a valiant 
 ' regulus,' or kinglet, living at Gweek, up the Helford river, who 
 was indeed a distant connection of Hereward himself, having 
 married, as did so many of the Celtic princes, the daughter of 
 a Danish sea rover of Siward's blood. They told him also that 
 the kinglet increased his wealth, not only by the sale of tin and 
 of red cattle, but by a certain amount of ' summer-leding ' {i.e. 
 jDiracy beween seed-time and harvest) in company with his 
 Danish brothers - in - law from Dublin and Waterf ord : and 
 Hereward, who believed, with most Englishmen of the East 
 Country, that Cornwall still produced a fair crop of giants, 
 some of them with two and even three heads, had hopes that 
 Alef might show him some adventure worthy of his sword. He 
 sailed in, therefore, over a rolling bar, between jagged points of 
 black rock, and up a tide river which wandered and branched 
 away inland like a landlocked lake, between high green walls 
 of oak and ash, till they saw at the head of the tide Alef 's town, 
 nestling in a glen which sloped towards the southern sun. They 
 discovered, besides, two ships drawn up upon the beach, whose 
 long lines and snake-heads, beside the stoat carved on the beak- 
 head of one, and the adder on that of the other, bore witness to 
 the piratical habits of their owner. The merchants, it seemed, 
 were well known to the Cornishmen on shore, and Hereward 
 went up with them unopposed ; joast the ugly dykes and muddy 
 leats, where Alef's slaves were streaming the gravel for tin ore ; 
 through rich alluvial pastures spotted with red cattle ; and up 
 to Alef's town. Earthworks and stockades surrounded a little 
 church of ancient stone, and a cluster of granite cabins thatched 
 with turf, in M'hich the slaves abode. In the centre of all a vast 
 stone barn, with low walls and high sloping roof, contained Alef's 
 family, treasures, housecarles, horses, cattle, and pigs. They 
 entered at one end between the pigstyes, passed on through the 
 cow-stalls, then through the stables ; till they saw before them, 
 dim through the reek of peat-smoke, a long oaken table, at which 
 sat huge dark-haired Cornishmen, with here and there among 
 them the yellow head of a Norseman, who were Alef's following 
 of lighting men. Boiled meat was there in plenty ; barley cakes 
 
 ^ Probably a corruption of the Norse name Olaf. There is much Norse 
 blood in the seaports of Cornwall and Devon, as the surnames testify.
 
 Ill HOW HEREWARD SUCCOURED A PRINCESS 53 
 
 and ale. At the head of the table, on a high-backed settle, was 
 Alef himself, a jolly giant, who was just setting to work to 
 drink himself stupid with mead made from narcotic heather 
 honey. By his side sate a lovely dark-haired girl, with great 
 gold tores upon her throat and wrists, and a great gold brooch 
 fastening a shawl which had plainly come from the looms of 
 Spain or of the East ; and next to her again, feeding her with 
 tit-bits cut off with his own dagger, and laid on barley cake 
 instead of a plate, sat a more gigantic personage even than 
 Alef, the biggest man that Hereward had ever seen, with high 
 cheek-bones and small ferret eyes, looking out from a greasy 
 mass of bright red hair and beard. 
 
 No questions were asked of the newcomers. They set them- 
 selves down in silence in empty places, and according to the 
 laws of the good old Cornish hospitality, were allowed to eat 
 and drink their fill before they spoke a word. 
 
 'Welcome here again, friend,' said Alef at last, in good 
 enough Danish, calling the eldest merchant by name. ' Do you 
 bring wine ? ' 
 
 The merchant nodded. 
 
 ' And you want tin V 
 
 The merchant nodded again, and lifting his cup drank Alef's 
 health, following it up by a coarse joke in Cornish, which raised 
 a laugh all round. 
 
 The Norse trader of those days, it must be remembered, was 
 . none of the cringing and efieminate chapmen who figure in the 
 stories of the middle ages. A free Norse or Dane, himself often 
 of noble blood, he fought as willingly as he bought ; and held 
 his own as an equal, whether at the court of a Cornish kinglet 
 or at that of the great Kaiser of the Greeks. 
 
 'And you, fair sir,' said Alef, looking keenly at Hereward, 
 ' by what name shall I call you, and what service can I do for 
 you ? You look more like an earl's son than a merchant, and 
 are come here surely for other things besides tin.' 
 
 'Health to King Alef,' said Hereward, raising the cup. 
 'Who I am I will tell to none but Alef's self : but an earl's son 
 I am, though an outlaw and a rover. My lands are the breadth 
 of my boot sole. My plough is my sword. IMy treasure is my 
 good right hand. Nothing I have, and nothing I need, save to 
 serve noble kings and earls, and win me a champion's fame. If 
 you have battles to fight, tell me ; that I may fight them for 
 you. If you have none, thank God for his peace ; and let me 
 eat and drink, and go in peace.' 
 
 ' King Alef needs neither man nor boy to fight his battle as 
 long as Ironhook ^ sits in his hall. 
 
 It was the red-bearded giant who spoke, in a broken tongue, 
 
 ^ ' Ulcus Ferreus,' says Richard of Ely ; surely a misreading for uncus. 
 The hook was a not uncommou weapon among seamen.
 
 54 HEREWARD THE WAKE . chap. 
 
 part Scotch, part Cornish, part Danish, which Hereward could 
 liardly understand : but that the ogre intended to insult him he 
 understood well enough. 
 
 Hereward had hoped to find giants in Cornwall ; and behold 
 he had found one at once ; though rather, to judge from his 
 looks, a Pictisli than a Cornisli giant ; and true tohis reckless 
 determination to defy and fight every man and beast who was 
 willing to defy and fight him, he turned on his elbow and stared 
 at Ironhook in scorn, meditating some speech which might 
 prove the hoped-for quarrel. 
 
 As he did so his eye happily caught that of the fair princess. 
 She was watching him with a strange look, admiring, warning, 
 imploring ; and when she saw that he noticed her, she laid her 
 finger on her lip in token of silence, crossed herself devoutly, 
 and then laid her finger on her lips again, as if beseeching him 
 to be patient and silent in the name of the heavenly powers. 
 
 Hereward, as is well seen, wanted not for quick wit or for 
 chivalrous feeling. He had observed the rough devotion of the 
 giant to the lady. He had observed, too, that she shrank from 
 it ; that she turned away with loathing when he offered her his 
 own cup, while he answered by a dark and deadly scowl. 
 
 Was there an adventure here ? Was she in duresse either 
 from this Ironhook, or from her father, or from both ? Did she 
 need Hereward's lielp ? If so, she was so lovely that he could 
 not refuse it. And on the chance, he swallowed down his high 
 stomach, and answered blandly enough : 
 
 ' One could see without eyes, noble sir, that you were worth 
 any ten common men : but as every one has not like you the 
 luck of so lovely a lady by your side, I thouglit that perchance 
 you might hand over some of your lesser quarrels to one like" 
 me, who has not yet seen so much good fighting as yourself, and 
 enjoy yourself in pleasant company at home, as I should surely 
 do in your place.' 
 
 The Princess shuddered and turned jDale ; then looked at 
 Hereward and smiled her thanks. Ironhook laughed a savage 
 laugh. 
 
 Hereward's jest being translated into Cornish for the benefit 
 of the comjiany, was highly approved by all ; and good humour 
 being restored, every man got drunk save Hereward, who found 
 the mead too sweet and sickening. 
 
 After which those who could go to bed, went to bed, not as 
 in England,^ among tlie rushes on the floor, but in the bunks 
 or berths of wattle which stood two or three tiers high along 
 the wall. 
 
 The next morning, as Hereward went out to wash his face 
 and hands in the brook below (lie being the only man in the 
 house who did so), Martin Lightfoot followed him. 
 
 ^ Cornwall was not then considered part of England.
 
 HI HOW HEREWARD SUCCOURED A PRINCESS 55 
 
 'What is it, Martin? Hast thou had too much of that 
 sweet mead last night that thou must come out to cool thy 
 head too ? ' 
 
 ' I came out for two i-easons — first to see fair play, in case that 
 Ironhook should come to wash his ugly visage, and find you on 
 all fours over the brook — you understand? And next to tell 
 you what I heard last night among the maids.' 
 
 ' And what didst thou hear ? ' 
 
 'Fine adventures, if we can but compass them. You saw 
 that lady with the carrot-headed fellow ? I saw that you saw. 
 Well, if you will believe me, that man has no more gentle blood 
 than I have. He is a No-man's son, a Pict from Galloway, who 
 came clown with a pirate crew, and has made himself the 
 master of this drunken old prince, and the darling of all his 
 housecarles, and now will needs be his son-in-law whether he 
 will or not.' 
 
 ' I thought as much,' said Hereward ; ' but how didst thou 
 find out this?' 
 
 'I went out and sat with the knaves and the maids, and 
 listened to their harp-playing (and harp they can, these Cornish, 
 like very elves); and then I too sang songs and told tliem 
 stories, for I can talk their tongue somewhat, till they all blest 
 me for a right good fellow. And then I fell to praising up 
 Ironhook to the women.' 
 
 ' Praising him uji, man ? ' 
 
 ' Ay, just because I suspected him ; for the women are so 
 contrary that if you speak evil of a man they will surely speak 
 good of him ; but if you will only speak good of him, then you 
 will hear all the evil of him he ever has done, and more_ besides. 
 And this I heard ; tliat the king's daughter cannot abide him; 
 and would as lief marry a seal.' 
 
 ' One did not need to be told that,' said Hereward, ' as long 
 as one has eyes in one's head. I will kill the fellow and carry 
 her off", ere four-and-twenty hours be past.' 
 
 ' Softly, softly, my young master. You need to be told some- 
 thing that your eyes would not tell you, and tliat is that tlie 
 poor lass is betrothed already to a son of old King Ptanald the 
 Ostman, of Waterford, son of old King Sigtryg, who ruled there 
 when I was a boy.' 
 
 'He is a kinsman of mine tlien,' said Hereward. 'All the 
 more reason that I should kill this ruffian.' 
 
 ' If you can,' said Mai'tin Lightfoot. 
 
 ' If I can ? ' retorted Hereward fiercely. 
 
 ' Well, well, wilful heart must have its way, only take my 
 counsel ; speak to the poor young lady first, and see what she 
 will tell you, lest you only make bad worse, and bring down her 
 father and his men on her as well as you.' 
 
 Hereward agreed, and resolved to watch his opportunity of 
 speaking to the princess.
 
 56 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 As they went in to the morning meal they met Alef. He 
 was in high good humour with Hei-eward ; and all the more so 
 when Hereward told him his name, and how he was the son of 
 Leofric. 
 
 ' I will warrant you are,' he said, ' by the gray head you carry 
 on green shoulders. No discreeter man, they say, in these isles 
 than the old earl.' 
 
 'You speak truth, sir,' said Hereward, 'though he be no 
 father of mine now, for of Leofric it is said in King Edward's 
 court, that if a man ask counsel of him, it is as though he had 
 asked it of the oracles of God.' 
 
 ' Then you are his true son, young man. I saw how you 
 kept the peace with Ironhook, and I owe you thanks for it ; for 
 though he is my good friend, and will be my son-in-law ere long, 
 yet a quarrel with him is more than I can abide just now, and 
 I should not like to have seen my guest and my kinsman slain 
 in my house.' 
 
 Hereward would have said that he thought there was no fear 
 of that : — but he prudently lield his tongue, and having an end 
 to gain, listened instead of talking. 
 
 ' Twenty years ago, of course, I could have thrashed him as 
 
 easily as but now I am getting old and shaky, and the man 
 
 has been a great help in need ; six kings of these parts has he 
 killed for me, who drove off my cattle, and stopped my tin 
 works, and plundered my monks' cells too, which is worse, while 
 I was away sailing the seas ; and he is a right good fellow at 
 heart, though he be a little rough. So be friends Avithhim 
 as long as you stay here, and if I can do you a service I 
 will.' 
 
 They went into their morning meal, at which Hereward re- 
 solved to keep the peace which he longed to break, and there- 
 fore, as was to be expected, broke. 
 
 For during the meal the fair lady, with no worse intention 
 perhaps than that of teasing her tyrant, fell to open praises of 
 Hereward's fair face and golden hair, and being insulted there- 
 fore by the Ironhook, i-etaliated by observations about his 
 personal appearance, which were more common in the eleventh 
 century than they happily are now. He, to comfort himself, 
 drank deep of the French wine which had just been brought 
 and broached, and then went out into the courtyard, where in 
 the midst of his admiring fellow-ruffians he enacted a scene as 
 ludicrous as it was pitiable. All the childish vanity of the 
 savage boiled over. He strutted, he shouted, he tossed about 
 his huge limbs, he called for a harper, and challenged all around 
 to dance, sing, leap, fight, do anything against him ; meeting 
 with nothing but admiring silence, he danced himself out of 
 breath, and then began boasting once more of liis fights,_his 
 cruelties, his butcheries, his impossible escapes and victories ; 
 till at last, as luck would have it, he espied Hereward, and
 
 in HOW HEREWARD SUCCOURED A PRINCESS 57 
 
 poured out a stream of abuse against Englishmen and English 
 courage. 
 
 ' Englishmen,' he said, ' were nought. Had he not slain three 
 of them himself with one blow 1 ' 
 
 ' Of your mouth, I suppose,' quoth Hereward, who saw that 
 the quarrel must come, and was glad to have it done and over. 
 
 ' Of my mouth ? ' roared Ironhook, ' of my sword, man ! ' 
 
 ' Of your mouth,' said Hereward ' Of your brain were they 
 begotten, of the breath of your mouth they were born, and by 
 the breath of your mouth you can slay them again as often as 
 you choose.' 
 
 The joke, as it has been handed down to us by the old 
 chroniclers, seems clumsy enough : but it sent the princess, say 
 they, into shrieks of laughter. 
 
 ' Were it not that my lord Alef was here,' shouted Ironhook, 
 ' I would kill you out of hand.' 
 
 ' Promise to fight fair, and do your worst. The more fairly 
 you fight, the more honour you will win,' said Hereward. 
 
 Whereupon the two were parted for the while. 
 
 Two hours afterwards Hereward, completely armed with 
 helmet and mail shirt, sword and javelin, hurried across the 
 great courtyard with Martin Lightfoot at his heels, towards the 
 little church upon the knoll above. The two wild men entered 
 into the cool darkness, and saw before them by the light of a 
 tiny lamp the crucifix over the altar, and beneath it that which 
 was then believed to be the body of Him who made heaven and 
 earth. They stopped trembling for a moment ; bowed them- 
 selves before that to them perpetual miracle : and then hurried 
 on to a low doorway to the right, inside which dwelt Alef's 
 chaplain, one of those good Celtic priests who were supposed to 
 represent a Christianity more ancient than, and all but inde- 
 pendent of, the then all-absorbing Church of Rome 
 
 The cell was such an one as a convict would now disdain to 
 inhabit. A low lean-to roof ; the slates and rafters unceiled ; 
 the stone walls and floor unplastered ; ill-lighted by a hand- 
 broad window, unglazed, and closed with a shutter at night. 
 A truss of straw and a rug, the priest's bed, lay in a corner. 
 The only other furniture was a large oak cliest, containing the 
 holy vessels and vestments and a few old books. It stood 
 directly under the window for the sake of light, for it served 
 the good priest for both table and chair ; and on it he was 
 sitting reading in his book at that minute, the sunshine and the 
 wind streaming in behind his head, doing no good to his rheuma- 
 tism of thirty years' standing. 
 
 ' Is there a priest here ? ' asked Hereward hurriedly. 
 
 The old man looked up, shook his head and answered in 
 Cornish. 
 
 ' Speak to him in Latin, Martin : may be he will understand 
 that.'
 
 58 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ]\Iartin spoke. ' jNIy lord here wants a priest to shrive him, 
 and that quickly. He is going to fight the great tyrant Iron- 
 hook, as you call him.' 
 
 ' Ironhook ? ' answered the j^riest in good Latin enough, 
 ' And he so young ! God help him, he is a dead man. What 
 is this ? A fresh soul sent to its account by the hands of that 
 man of Belial ? Cannot he entreat him ; can he not make 
 peace, and save his young life ? He is but a stripling, and that 
 man, like Goliath of old, a man of war from his youtli up.' 
 
 'And my master,' said Martin Lightfoot proudly, 'is like 
 young David — one that can face a giant and kill him ; for he 
 has slain, like David, his lion and his bear ere now. At least, 
 he is one that will neither make peace, nor entreat the face of 
 living man. So shrive him quickly, master priest, and let him 
 begone to his work.' 
 
 Poor Martin Lightfoot spoke thus bravely only to keep up 
 his spirits and his young lord's — for in spite of his confidence in 
 Hereward's prowess, he had given him up for a lost man ; and 
 the tears ran down his rugged cheeks as tlie old priest, rising 
 up and seizing Hereward's two hands in his, besought him, with 
 the passionate and graceful eloquence of his race, to have 
 mercy upon his own youth. 
 
 Hereward understood his meaning, though not his words. 
 
 ' Tell liim,' he said to Martin, ' that fight I must, and tell him 
 that shrive me he must and that quickly. Tell him how the 
 fellow met me in the wood below just now, and would have slain 
 me there, unarmed as I was ; and how, when I tokl him it was 
 a shame to strike a naked man, he told me he would give me 
 but one hour's grace to go back, on the faith of a gentleman, for 
 my armour and weapons, and meet him there again to die by 
 his hand. So shrive me quick, sir priest.' 
 
 Hereward knelt down. Martin Lightfoot knelt down by 
 him, and with a trembling voice began to interpret for him. 
 
 ' What does he say?' asked Hereward, as the priest murmured 
 something to hirtiself. 
 
 ' He said,' quoth Martin, now fairly blubbering, ' that, fair 
 and young as you are, your shrift should be as short and as 
 clean as David's.' 
 
 Hereward was touched. 'Anything but that,' said he, 
 smiting on his breast, 'Mea culpa — mea culpa — mea maxima 
 culpa.' 
 
 ' Tell him how I robbed my father.' 
 
 The priest groaned as Martin did so. 
 
 ' And how I mocked at my mother, and left her in a rage, 
 without ever a kind word between us. And how I have slain I 
 know not how many men in battle, though that, I trust, need 
 not lie heavily on my soul, seeing that I killed them all in fair 
 fight.' _ 
 
 Again the priest groaned. ^
 
 Ill HOW HEREAVARD SUCCOURED A PRINCESS 59 
 
 ' And how I robbed a certain priest of his money and gave 
 it away to my housecarles.' 
 
 Here the priest groaned more bitterly still. 
 
 ' Oh ! my son, my son, where hast thou found time to lay all 
 these burdens on thy young soul 1 ' 
 
 ' It will take less time,' said Martin bluntly, ' for you to take 
 the burdens off again.' 
 
 ' But I dare not absolve him for robbing a priest. Heaven 
 help him ! He must go to the bishop for that. He is more fit 
 to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem tlian to battle.' 
 
 ' He has no time,' quoth Martin, ' for bishops or Jeru- 
 salem.' 
 
 ' Tell him,' says Hereward, ' that in tliis purse is all I have, 
 that in it he will find sixty silver pennies, besides two strange 
 coins of gold.' 
 
 'Sir jjriest,' said Martin Liglitfoot, taking the i^urse from 
 Hereward, and keeping it in his own hand, ' there are in this 
 bag monies.' 
 
 Martin had no mind to let the priest into the secret of the 
 state of their finances. 
 
 ' And tell him,' continued Hereward, ' that if I fall in this 
 battle I give him all that money, that he may part it among the 
 poor for the good of my soul.' 
 
 ' Pish ! ' said Martin to his lord ; ' that is paying him for 
 having you killed. You should pay him for keeping you alive.' 
 And without waiting for the answer, he spoke in Latin. 
 
 'And if he comes back safe from this battle, he will give 
 you ten pennies for yourself and your church, priest, and 
 therefore expects you to pray your very loudest while he is 
 gone.' 
 
 ' I will pray, I will pray,' said the holy man : ' I will wrestle 
 in prayer. Ah ! that he could slay the wicked, and reward the 
 proud according to his deservings. Ah ! that he could rid me 
 and my master, and my young lady, of this son of Belial — this 
 devourer of widows and orphans — this slayer of the poor and 
 needy, who fills tliis place with innocent blood — him of whom 
 it is written, "Tliey stretch forth their mouth unto the heaven, 
 and their tongue goeth through the world. Therefore fall the 
 people unto them, and tliereout suck they no small advantage." 
 I will shidve liim, shi-ive him of all save robbing the priest, and 
 for that he must go to the bishop, if ho live : and, if not, the 
 Lord have mercy on his soul.' 
 
 And so, weeping and trembling, the good old man pronounced 
 the words of absolution. 
 
 Hereward rose, thanked him, and then hurried out in 
 silence. 
 
 'You will pray your very loudest, priest,' said Martin, as he 
 followed his young lord. 
 
 'I will, I will,' quoth he, and kneeling down began to chant
 
 60 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 that noble VSd Psalm, ' Quam bonus Israel,' which he had just 
 so fitly quoted. 
 
 ' Thou gavest him the bag, Martin ? ' said Hereward, as they 
 hurried on. 
 
 ' You are not dead yet. " No pay no play " is as good a rule 
 for priest as for layman.' 
 
 'Now then, Martin Lightfoot, good-bye. Come not with 
 me. It must never be said, even slanderously, that I brought 
 two into the field against one ; and if I die, Martin— — ' 
 
 ' You won't die ! ' said Lightfoot, shutting his teeth. 
 
 'If I die, go back to my people somehow, and tell them that 
 I died like a true earl's son.' 
 
 _ Hereward held out his hand ; Martin fell on his knees and 
 kissed it ; watched him with set teeth till he disappeared in 
 the wood ; and then started forward and entered the bushes at 
 a different spot. 
 
 ' I must be nigh at hand to see fair play,' he muttered to 
 himself, 'incase any of his ruffians be hanging about. Fair 
 play I'll see, and fair play I'll give, too, for the sake of my 
 lord's honour, though I be bitterly loth to do it. So many times 
 as I have been a villain when it was of no use, why mayn't I 
 be one now, when it would serve the purpose indeed ? Why 
 did we ever come into this accursed jilace 1 But one thing I 
 will do,' said he, as he ensconced himself under a thick holly, 
 whence he could see the meeting of the combatants upon an 
 open lawn some twenty yards away ; ' if that big bull calf 
 kills my master, and I do not jump on his back and pick 
 his brains out with this trusty steel of mine, may my right 
 arm ' 
 
 And Martin Lightfoot swore a fearful oath, which need not 
 here be written. 
 
 The priest had just finished his chant of the 73d Psalm, and 
 had betaken himself in his spiritual warfare, as it was then 
 called, to the equally opposite 52d, ' Quid gioriaris 1 ' 
 
 ' Why boastest thou thyself, thou tyrant, that thou canst do 
 mischief, whereas the goodness of God endureth yet daily ? ' 
 
 ' Father ! father ! ' cried a soft voice in the doorway, ' where 
 are you 1 ' 
 
 And in hurried the princess. 
 
 ' Hide this,' she said, breathless, drawing from beneath her 
 mantle a huge sword ; 'hide it, where no one dare touch 
 it, under the altar behind the holy rood : no place too 
 secret.' 
 
 'What is it?' asked the priest, rising from his knees. 
 
 ' His sword — the Ogre's — his magic sword, which kills whom- 
 soever it strikes. I coaxed him to let me have it last night 
 when he was tipsy, for fear he should quarrel with the young 
 stranger ; and I have kept it from him ever since by one excuse 
 or another ; and now he has sent one of his ruffians in for it,
 
 Ill HOW HEREWARD SUCCOURED A PRINCESS 61 
 
 saying, that if I do not give it up at once he will come back and 
 kill me.' 
 
 ' He dare not do that,' said the priest. 
 
 ' What is there that he dare not 1 ' said she. ' Hide it at once ; 
 I know that he wants it to fight with this Hereward.' 
 
 ' If he wants it for that,' said the priest, ' it is too late ; for 
 half an hour is past since Hereward went to meet him.' 
 
 ' And you let him go ? You did not persuade him, stop him 1 
 You let him go hence to his death 1 ' 
 
 In vain the good man expostulated, and explained that it 
 was no fault of his. 
 
 ' You must come with me this instant to my father — to them ; 
 they must be parted. They shall be parted. If you dare not, I 
 dare. I will throw myself between them, and he that strikes 
 the other shall strike me.' 
 
 And she hurried tlie priest out of the house, down the knoll, 
 and across the yard. There they found others on the same 
 errand. The news that a battle was toward had soon spread, 
 and the men-at-arms were hurrying down to the tight ; kept 
 back, however, by Alef, who strode along at their head. 
 
 Alef was sorely perplexed in mind. He had taken, as all 
 honest men did, a great liking to Hereward. Moreover, he was 
 his kinsman and his guest. Save him he would if he could ; 
 but how to save him without mortally offending his tyrant 
 Ironhook he could not see. At least he would exert what little 
 power he had, and prevent, if possible, his men-at-arms from 
 helping their darling leader against the hapless lad. 
 
 Alef's perplexity was much increased when his daughter 
 bounded towards him, seized him by the arm, and hurried him 
 on, showing by look and word which of tlie combatants she 
 favoured, so plainly that the ruffians behind broke into scornful 
 murmurs. They burst through the bushes. Martin Lightfoot 
 happily heard them coming, and had just time to slip away 
 noiselessly, like a rabbit, to the other part of the cover. 
 
 The combat seemed at the first glance to be one between a 
 grown man and a child, so unequal was the size of the com- 
 batants. But the second look showed that the advantage was 
 by no means with Ironhook. Stumbling to and fro with the 
 broken shaft of a javelin sticking in his thigh, he vainly tried 
 to seize Hereward with his long- iron grapple. Hereward, 
 bleeding, but still active and upright, broke away, and sprang 
 round him, watcliing for an opportunity to strike a deadly blow. 
 The housecarles rushed forward with yells. Alef shouted to the 
 combatants to desist : but ere the party could reach them, 
 Hereward's opportunity had come. Ironhook after a fruitless 
 lunge stumbled forward. Hereward leapt aside, and spying an 
 unguarded spot l)elow the corslet, drove his sword deep into the 
 giant's body, and rolled him over upon the sward. Then arose 
 shouts of fury.
 
 62 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' Foul play ! ' cried one. 
 
 And otliers, taking up the cry, called out, ' Sorcery ! ' and 
 ' Treason ! ' 
 
 Hereward stood over Ironhook as he lay writhing and foam- 
 ing on the ground. 
 
 ' Killed by a boy at last ! ' groaned he. ' If I had but had my 
 sword — my brain-biter which that witch stole from me but last 
 night ! ' — and amid foul curses and bitter tears of shame his 
 mortal spirit fled to its doom. 
 
 The housecai'les rushed in on Hereward, who had enough to 
 do to keep them at arm's length by long sweeps of his sword. 
 
 Alef entreated, threatened, promised a fair trial if the men 
 would give fair play : when, to complete the confusion, the 
 Ijrincess tlirew herself upon the corpse, shrieking and tearing 
 lier hair ; and to Hereward's surjorise and disgust, bewailed the 
 prowess and tlie virtues of the dead, calling upon all present to 
 avenge his murder. 
 
 Hereward vowed inwardly that he would never again trust 
 woman's fancy, or fight in woman's quarrel. He was now nigh 
 at his wits' end ; the housecarles had closed round him in a 
 ring with the intention of seizing him ; and however well he 
 might defend his front, he might be crippled at any moment 
 from behind : but in the very nick of time Martin Lightfoot 
 burst through tlie crowd, set himself heel to heel with his 
 master, and broke out, not with threats, but with a good- 
 humoured laugh. 
 
 ' Here is a pretty coil about a red-headed brute of a Pict ! 
 Danes, Ostmen,' he cried, 'are you not ashamed to call such a 
 fellow your lord, when you have such a true earl's son as this to 
 lead you if you will ? ' 
 
 The Ostmen in the company looked at each other. Martin 
 Lightfoot saw that Iiis appeal to the antipathies of race had 
 told. He, therefore, followed it up by a string of witticisms 
 upon the Pictish nation in general, of which tlie only two fit for 
 modern ears to be set down were the two old stories, that the 
 Picts had feet so large that they used to lie upon their backs 
 and hold up their legs to shelter themselves from the sun ; and 
 that when killed, they could not fall down, but died as they 
 were, all standing. 
 
 ' So that the only foul play I can see is that my master 
 shoved tlie fellow over after lie had stabbed him, instead of 
 leaving him to stand upright there, like one of your Cornish 
 Dolmens, till his flesh should fall off' his bones.' 
 
 Hereward saw the effect of oMartin's words ; and burst out in 
 Danish likewise, with a true Viking chant — 
 
 ' Look at me, dread me ! 
 I am the Hereward,^ 
 
 ^ ' Guardian of the Army.'
 
 Ill HOW HEREWARD SUCCOURED A PRINCESS 63 
 
 The watcher, the chanipion, 
 
 The Berserker, the Viking, 
 
 The land-thief, the sea-thief, 
 
 Young summer-pirate, 
 
 Famous land-waster, 
 
 Slayer of witch -bears, 
 
 Queller of Ogres, 
 
 Fattener of ravens, 
 
 Darling of gray wolves, 
 
 Wild widow-maker. 
 
 Touch me — to wolf and 
 
 Raven I give you. 
 
 Ship with me boldly, 
 
 Follow me gaily. 
 
 Over the swan's road, 
 
 Over the whale's bath. 
 
 Far to the southward, 
 
 Where sun and sea meet ; 
 
 Where from the palm-boughs 
 
 Apples of gold hang ; 
 
 And freight there our long-snake 
 
 With sendal and orfray, 
 
 Dark Moorish maidens, 
 
 And gold of Algier. ' 
 
 ' Hark to the Viking ! Hark to the right earl's son ! ' shouted 
 some of the Danes, whose blood had been stirred many a time 
 before by such wild words, and on whom Hereward's youth and 
 beauty had their due efi'ect. And now the counsels of the 
 ruffians being divided, the old priest gained courage to stej:) in. 
 Let them deliver Hereward and his serving man into his custody. 
 He would bring them forth on the morrow, and there should be 
 full investigation and fair trial. And so Hereward and Martin, 
 who both refused stoutly to give up their arms, were marched 
 back into the town, locked in the little church, and left to their 
 meditations. 
 
 Hereward sat down on the pavement and cursed the princess. 
 Martin Lightfoot took off his master's corslet, and, as well as 
 the darkness would allow, bound up his wounds, which happily 
 were not severe. 
 
 'Were I you,' said lie at last, 'I should keep my curses till I 
 saw the end of this adv^enture.' 
 
 'Has not the girl betrayed me shamefully V 
 
 ' Not she. I saw her warn you, as far as looks could do, not 
 to quarrel with tlie man.' 
 
 ' That was because she did not know me. Little she thouglit 
 that I could ' 
 
 ' Don't holloa till you are out of the wood. This is a niglit 
 for i^raying ratlier tlian l)oasting.' 
 
 'iShe cannot really love that wretch,' said Hereward, after a 
 pause. 'Thou saw'st how she mocked him.'
 
 64 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 * Women are strange things, and often tease most where they 
 love most.' 
 
 ' But such a misbegotten savage.' 
 
 ' Women are strange things, say I, and with some a big fellow 
 is a pretty fellow, be he uglier than seven Ironhooks. Still, just 
 because women are strange things, have patience, say I. 
 
 The lock creaked, and the old priest came in. Martin leapt 
 to the open door ; but it was slammed in his face by men out- 
 side with scornful laughter. 
 
 The priest took Hereward's head in his hands, wept over 
 him, blest him for having slain Goliath like young David, and 
 then set food and drink before the two ; but he answered 
 Martin's questions only with sighs and shakings of the head. 
 
 * Let us eat and drink then,' said Martin, ' and after that you, 
 my lord, sleep ofi' your wounds while I watch the door. I have 
 no fancy for these fellows taking us ^^nawares at night.' 
 
 Martin lay quietly across the door till the small hours, listen- 
 ing to every sound, till the key creaked once more in the lock. 
 He started at the sound ; and seizing the person who entered 
 round the neck, whispered, ' One word, and you are dead.' 
 
 ' Do not hurt me,' answered a stifled voice ; and Martin Light- 
 foot, to his surprise, found that he had grasped no armed man, 
 but the slight frame of a young girl. 
 
 'I am the princess,' she whispered, 'let me in.' 
 
 ' A very pretty hostage for us,' thought Martin, and letting 
 her go seized the key, locking the door in the inside. 
 
 'Take me to your master,' she cried, and Martin led her up 
 the church wondering, but half suspecting some further 
 trap. 
 
 'You have a dagger in your hand,' said he, holding her wrist. 
 
 ' I have. If I had meant to use it, it would have been used 
 first on you. Take it, if you like.' 
 
 She hurried up to Hereward, who lay sleeping quietly on the 
 altar -steps ; knelt by him, wrung his hands, called him her 
 champion, her deliverer. 
 
 'I am not well awake yet,' said he coldly, 'and do not know 
 whether this may not be a dream, as more that I have seen and 
 heard seems to be.' 
 
 ' It is no dream. I am true. I was always true to you. Have 
 I not put myself in your power 1 Am I not come here to deliver 
 you, my deliverer 1 ' 
 
 ' The tears which you shed over your Ogre's corpse seem to 
 have dried quickly enough.' 
 
 'Cruel ! What else could I do? You heard him accuse me 
 to his rough followers of having stolen his sword. My life, my 
 father's life, were not safe a moment, had I not dissembled, and 
 done the thing I loathed. Ah ! ' she went on bitterly. ' You 
 men, who rule the world and us by cruel steel, you forget that 
 we poor women have but one weapon left wherewith to hold
 
 Ill HOW HEREAVARD SUCCOURED A PRINCESS G5 
 
 our own, and that is cunning ; and are driven by you day after 
 day to tell the lie which we detest.' 
 
 ' Then you really stole his sword 1 ' 
 
 ' And hid it here, for your sake.' And she drew the weapon 
 from behind the altar. 
 
 ' Take it. It is yours now. It is magical. Whoever smites 
 Avitli it, need never smite again. Now, quick, you must be gone. 
 But promise one thing before you go.' 
 
 ' If I leave this land safe I will do it, be it what it may. Why 
 not come with me, lady, and see it done 1 ' 
 
 She laughed. ' Vain boy, do you think that I love you well 
 enough for that 1 ' 
 
 ' I have won you, and why should I not keep you 1 ' said Hei^e- 
 ward sullenly. 
 
 ' Do you not know that I am betrothed to your kinsman 1 
 And — though that you cannot know — that I love your kins- 
 man V 
 
 ' 8o I have all the blows and none of the spoil.' 
 
 'Tush, you have the glory — and the sword — and the chance, 
 if you will do my bidding, of being called by all ladies a true 
 and gentle knight, who cared not for his own pleasure but for 
 deeds of chivalry. Go to my betrothed — to Waterford over the 
 sea. Take him this ring, and tell liim by that token to come 
 and claim me soon, lest he run the danger of losing me a second 
 time, and lose me then for ever ; for I am in hard case here, and 
 were it not for my father's sake, perliaps I might dare, in spite 
 of what men might say, to flee with you to your kinsman across 
 the sea.' 
 
 'Trust me and come,' said Hereward, whose young blood 
 kindled with a sudden nobleness. ' Trust me and I will treat 
 you like my sister, like my queen. By the holy rood above I 
 will swear to be true to you.' 
 
 'I do trust you, but it cannot be. Here is money for you in 
 plenty to hire a passage if you need : it is no shame to take it 
 from me. And now one thing more. Hei'e is a cord — you must 
 bind <he hands and feet of the old priest inside, and then you 
 must bind mine likewise.' 
 
 ' Never,' quoth Hereward. 
 
 'It must be. How else can I explain your having got the 
 key ? I made them give me the key on the pretence that with 
 one who liad most cause to hate you, it would he safe ; and 
 when tiiey come and find us in the moi-ning I shall tell them 
 how I came here to stab you with my own hands — you must lay 
 the dagger by me — and how you and your man fell upon us and 
 bound us, and you escaped. All ! INlary [Mother,' continued tlie 
 maiden with a sigh, ' when sliall we poor weak women have no 
 more need of lying 1 ' 
 
 She lay down, and Hereward, in spite of himself, gently 
 bound her hands and feet, kissing them as he bound them. 
 
 F H. T. \v.
 
 66 HERE WARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 'I shall do well here upon the altar steps,' said she. 'How 
 can I spend my time better till the morning light than to lie 
 here and pray 1 ' 
 
 The old priest, who was plainly in the plot, submitted meekly 
 to the same fate ; and Hereward and ]\Iarti_n Lightfoot stole 
 out, locking the door, but leaving the key in it outside. To 
 scramble over the old earthwork was an easy matter ; and in a 
 few minutes they were hurrying down the valley to the sea, 
 with a fresh breeze blowing behind them from the north. 
 
 ' Did I not tell you, my lord,' said Martin Lightfoot, ' to keep 
 your curses till you had seen the end of this adventure ?' 
 
 Hereward was silent. His brain was still whirling from the 
 adventures of the day, and his heart was very deeply touched. 
 His sln-ift of the morning, hurried and formal as it had been, 
 liad softened him. His danger— for he felt how he had been 
 face to face with death— had softened him likewise ; and he re- 
 pented somewhat of his vainglorious and bloodthirsty boasting 
 over a fallen foe, as he began to see that there was a purpose 
 more noble in life than ranging land and sea, a ruffian among 
 ruffians, seeking for glory amid blood and flame. The idea of 
 chivalry, of succouring the weak and the oppressed, of keeping 
 faith and honour not merely towards men who could avenge 
 themselves, but towards women who could not ; the dim dawn 
 of purity, gentleness, and the conquest of his own tierce 
 passions— all these had taken root in his heart during his 
 adventure with the fair Cornish girl. The seed was sown. 
 Would it be cut down again by the bitter blasts of the rough 
 fighting world, or would it grow and bear the noble fruit of 
 'gentle, very perfect knighthood?' 
 
 They reached the ship, clambered on board without cere- 
 mony, at the risk of being taken and killed as robbers, and told 
 their case. The merchants had not completed their cargo of 
 tin. Hereward offered to make up their loss to them, if 
 they would set sail at once ; and they, feeling that the place 
 would be for some time to come too hot to hold them, and being 
 also in high delight, like lionest Ostmen, with Hereward's 
 prowess, agreed to sail straight for Waterford, and complete 
 their cargo there. But the tide was out. It was three full 
 hours before the ship could float ; and for three full hours they 
 Avaited in fear and trembling, expecting the Cornishmen to be 
 down upon them in a body every moment ; under which whole- 
 some fear some on board prayed fervently who had never been 
 known to pray before.
 
 IV HOW HEKEWARD TOOK SERVICE WITH RANALD 67 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 HOW HEEEWAKD TOOK SERVICE WITH RANALD, KING OF 
 
 WATERFORD. 
 
 The coasts of Ireland were in a state of comparative peace in 
 the middle of the eleventh century. The ships of Loghlin, seen 
 far out at sea, no longer drove the population shrieking inland. 
 Heathen Danes, whether fair-haired Fiongall from Norway, or 
 brown-haired Dubhgall from Denmark proper, no longer burned 
 convents, tortured monks for their gold, or (as at Clonmacnoise) 
 set a heathen jDrincess, Oda, wife of Thorkill, son of Harold 
 Haarfagre, aloft on the high altar to receive the homage of the 
 conquered. The Scandinavian invaders had become Christian- 
 ised, and civilised also — owing to their continual intercourse 
 witli foreign nations — more highly than the Irish whom they 
 had overcome. That was easy ; for early Irish civilisation seems 
 to have existed only in the convents and for the religious ; and 
 when they were crushed, mere barbai'ism was left behind. And 
 now the same process went on in the east of Ireland, which went 
 on a generation or two later in the east and north of Scotland. 
 The Danes began to settle down into peaceful colonists and 
 traders. Ireland was poor ; and the convents plundered once 
 could not be plundered again. The Irish were desperately brave. 
 Ill-armed and almost naked, they were as perfect in the arts of 
 forest warfare as those modern Maories whom they so much re- 
 sembled : and though their black skenes and light darts were 
 no match for the Danish swords and battle-axes which they 
 adopted during the middle age, or their plaid trousers and felt 
 capes for the Danish helmet and chain corselet, still an Irishman 
 was so ugly a foe, that it was not worth while to fight with him 
 unless he could be robbed afterwards. The Danes, who, like 
 their descendants of Northumbria, Moray, and Sutherland, were 
 canny common sense folk, with a shrewd eye to interest, found, 
 somewhat to their regret, that there were trades even more pro- 
 fitable than robbery and murder. They therefore concentrated 
 themselves round harbours and river mouths, and sent forth 
 their ships to all tlie western seas, from Dublin, Waterford, 
 Wexford, Cork, or Limerick. Every imjiortant seaport in Ire- 
 land owes its existence to those sturdy Vikings' sons. In each 
 of tliese towns they liad founded a petty kingdom, which en- 
 dured until, and even in some cases after, tlie conquest of 
 Ireland by Henry II and Strongbow. They intermarried in 
 the meanwhile with the native Irish. Brian Boru, for instance, 
 was so connected with Danisli royalty, that it is still a question 
 whether he himself liad not Danish Ijlood in liis veins. King 
 Sigtryg Silkbeard, who fought against him at Cloutarf, was
 
 68 IIEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 actually his stepson — and so too, according to another Irisli 
 chronicler, was King Olaff Kvaran, who, even at the time of the 
 battle of Clontarf, was married to Brian Boru's daughter — a 
 marriage which (if a fact) was startlingly within the prohibited 
 degrees of consanguinity. But the ancient Irish were sadly 
 careless on such points ; and as Giraldus Cambrensis says, 
 ' followed the example of men of old in their vices more will- 
 ingly than in their virtues.' 
 
 ]\iore than forty years had elapsed since that famous battle 
 of Clontarf, and since Eagnvald, Eeginald, or Eanald, son of 
 Sigtryg the Norseman, had been slain therein by Brian Boru. 
 On that one day, so the Irish sang, the northern invaders were 
 exterminated, once and for all, by the Milesian hero, who had 
 craftily used the strangers to fight his battles, and then the 
 moment they became formidable to himself, crushed them till 
 ' from Howth to Brandon in Kerry, there was not a threshing- 
 floor without a Danish slave thrashing thereon, or a quern 
 without a Danish woman grinding thereat.' 
 
 Nevertheless, in spite of the total annihilation of the Danish 
 power in the Emerald isle, Eanald seemed to the eyes of mento 
 be still a hale old warrior, ruling constitutionally — ^that is, with 
 a wholesome fear of being outlawed or murdered if he misbe- 
 haved — over the Danes in Waterford ; with five Imndred fair- 
 haired warriors at his back, two-edged axe on shoulder, and 
 two-edged sword on thigh. His ships drove a thriving trade 
 with France and Spain in Irish fish, butter, honey, and furs. 
 His workmen coined money in the old round tower of Dundory, 
 built by his predecessor and namesake about the year 1003, 
 which stands as Eeginald's tower to this day. He had fought 
 many a bloody battle since his death at Clontarf, by the side of 
 Ills old leader Sigtryg Silkbeard. He had been many a time to 
 Dublin to visit his even more prosperous and formidable friend ; 
 and was so delighted witli the new church of the Holy Trinity, 
 which Sigtryg and his bishop Donatus had just built, not in the 
 Danish or Ostman town, but in the heart of ancient Celtic 
 Dublin (plain proof of the utter overthrow of the Danish power), 
 that he liad determined to build a like church in honour of the 
 Holy Trinity, in Waterford itself. A thriving valiant old king 
 he seemed, as he sat in his great house of pine logs under 
 Eeginald's tower upon the quay, drinking French and Spanisli 
 wines out of horns of ivory and cups of gold ; and over his head, 
 hanging upon the wall, the luige double-edged axe with which, 
 so his flatterers had whispered, Brian Boru had not slain him, 
 but he Brian Boru. 
 
 Nevertheless, then as since, alas ! the pleasant theory was 
 preferred by the jMilesian historians to the plain truth. And 
 far away inland, monks wrote and harpers sung of the death of 
 Eanald the fair-haired Fiongall, and all his 'mailed swarms.' 
 
 One Teague MacMurrough, indeed, a famous bard of those
 
 ly HOW HEREWARD TOOK SERVICE WITH RANALD 69 
 
 parts, composed unto his harp a song of Clontarf, the fame 
 whereof reached Ranald's ears, and so amused liim tliat he rested 
 not day or night till he had caught the hapless bard and brought 
 him in triumph into Waterford. There he compelled him at 
 sword's point to sing to him and his housecarles the Milesian 
 version of the great historical event ; and when the harper in 
 fear and trembling came to the story of Kanald's own death at 
 Brian Boru's hands, then the jolly old Viking laughed till the 
 tears ran down his face ; and instead of cutting otf Teague's 
 head, gave liim a cup of goodly wine, made him his own harper 
 thenceforth, and bade him send for his wife and children, and 
 sing to him every day, especially the song of Clontarf and his 
 own death ; treating him very much, in fact, as English royalty 
 during the last generation treated another Irish bard whose 
 song was even more sweet, and his notions of Irish history even 
 more grotesque, than those of Teague MacMurrough. 
 
 It was to this old king, or rather to his son Sigtryg, godson 
 of Sigtryg Silkbeard, and distant cousin of his own, that Here- 
 ward now took his way, and told his story, as the king sat in 
 his liall, drinking across the fire after the old Norse fashion. The 
 fire of pine logs was in the midst of the hall, and the smoke 
 went out through a hole in the roof. On one side was a long 
 bench, and in the middle of it the king's liigh arm-chair ; right 
 and left of him sat his kinsmen and the ladies, and his sea- 
 captains and men of wealth. Opposite, on the other side of the 
 fire, was another bench. In the middle of that sat his marshal, 
 and right and left all his housecarles. There were other benches 
 behind, on which sat more freemen, but of lesser rank. 
 
 And they were all drinking ale, which a servant poured out 
 of a bucket into a great bull's horn, and the men handed round 
 to each other. 
 
 Then Hereward came in, and sat down on the end of the 
 hindermost bench, and Martin stood behind him, till one of the 
 ladies said — 
 
 ' Who is that young stranger, who sits behind there so humbly 
 though he looks like an earl's son, more fit to sit here with us on 
 the high bench 1 ' 
 
 'So he does,' quoth King Ranald. 'Come forward hither, 
 young sir, and drink.' 
 
 And when Hereward came forward, all the ladies agreed tliat 
 he must be an earl's son ; for he had a great gold tore round his 
 neck, and gold rings on his wrists ; and a new scarlet coat, 
 bound with gold braid ; and scarlet stockings, cross-laced with 
 gold braid up to the knee ; and slioes trimmed with martin's 
 fur ; and a short blue silk cloak over all, trimmed with martin's 
 fur likewise ; and by his side, in a broad belt with gold studs, 
 was the Ogre's sword Brain -biter, with its ivory hilt and velvet 
 sheatli ; and all agreed that if lie had but been a head taller, 
 they had never seen a properer man.
 
 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 i 
 
 ' Aha ! such a gay young sea-cock does not come hither for 
 nouglit. Drink first, man, and tell us thy business after,' and 
 he readied the liorn to Hereward. 
 
 Hereward took it, and sang — 
 
 ' 111 this Braga-beaker, 
 Brave Ranald I pledge ; 
 In good liquor, which lightens 
 Long labour on oar-bench : 
 Good liquor which sweetens 
 The song of the scald.' 
 
 ' Thy voice is as fine as thy feathers, man. Nay, drink it alk 
 We ourselves drink here by the peg at midday ; but a stranger 
 is welcome to fill his inside at all hours.' 
 
 Whereon Hereward finislied the horn duly ; and, at Ranald's 
 bidding, sat him down on the high settle. He did not remark 
 that as he sat down, two handsome youths rose and stood behind 
 him. 
 
 'Now then, sir priest,' quoth the king, 'go on with your 
 story.' 
 
 A priest, Irish by his face and dress, who sat on the high 
 bench, rose, and renewed an oration which Hereward's entrance 
 had interrupted. 
 
 ' So, O great king, as says Homerus, this wise king called his 
 earls, knights, sea-captains, and housecarles, and said unto them, 
 " Whicli of these two kings is in the right, who can tell ? But 
 mind you, that tliis king of the Enchanters lives far away in 
 India, and we never heard of him more than his name : but this 
 king Ulixes and his Greeks live hard by ; and which of the two 
 is it wiser to quarrel with, him that lives hard by or him that 
 lives far off"?" Therefore, King Ranald, says, by the mouth of 
 my humility, the great Feargus, Lord of Ivark — " Take example 
 by Alcinous, the wise king of Fairy, and listen not to the am- 
 bassadors of those lying villains, O'Dea Lord of Slievardagh, 
 Maccarthy King of Cashel, and 0'Sulli^•an Lord of Knockraffin, 
 who all three between them could not raise kernes enough to 
 drive off one old widow's cow. Make friends with me, who live 
 upon your borders ; and you shall go peaceably through my 
 lands, to conquer and destroy them who live afar ofi'; as they 
 deserve, the sons of Baylial and Judas." ' 
 
 And the priest crossed himself, and sat down. At which 
 speech Hereward was seen to laugh. 
 
 ' Why do you laugh, young sir 1 The priest seems to talk like 
 a wise man, and is my guest and an ambassador.' 
 
 Then rose up Hereward, and liowed to the king. 'King 
 Ranald Sigtrygsson, it was not for rudeness that I laughed, for 
 I learnt good manners long ere I came here, but because I find 
 clerks alike all over the world.' 
 
 'How?'
 
 IV HOW HEREWARD TOOK SERVICE WITH RANALD 71 
 
 ' Quick at hiding false counsel under learned speech. I know 
 nothing of Ulixes, king, nor of this Feargus either ; and I am 
 but a lad, as you see ; but 1 heard a bird once in my own coun- 
 try who gave a very different counsel from the priest's.' 
 
 ' Speak on, then. This lad is no fool, my merry men all.' 
 
 'There were three copses, king, in our country, and eacli 
 copse stood on a hill. In the first there built an eagle, in the 
 second there built a sparhawk, in the third there built a crow. 
 
 ' Now the sparhawk came to the eagle, and said, " Go shares 
 with me, and we will kill the crow, and have her wood to our- 
 selves." 
 
 " Humph ! " says the eagle, " I could kill the crow without your 
 help ; however, I will think of it." 
 
 'When the crow heard that, she came to the eagle herself, 
 " King Eagle," says she, " why do you want to kill me, who live 
 ten miles from you, and never flew across your path in my life ? 
 Better kill that little rogue of a sparhawk who lives between us, 
 and is always ready to poach on your marches whenever your 
 back is turned. So you will have her wood as well as your 
 
 own." 
 
 ' " You are a wise crow," said the eagle ; and he went out and 
 killed the sparhawk, and took his wood.' 
 
 Loud laughed King Ranald and his Vikings all. 'Well 
 spoken, young man ! We Avill take the sparhawk, and let the 
 crow bide.' 
 
 ' Nay but,' quoth Hereward, * hear the end of the story. After 
 a while the eagle finds the crow beating about the edge of tlie 
 sparhawk's wood. 
 
 ' " Oho ! " says he, " so you can i3oach as well as that little hook- 
 nosed rogue 1" and he killed her too. 
 
 ' " Ah ! " says the crow, when she lay a-dying, " my blood is on 
 my own head. If I had but left the sj^arhawk Ijetween me and 
 this great tyrant ! 
 
 'And so the eagle got all three woods to himself.' 
 
 At which the Vikings laughed more loudly than ever ; and 
 King Ranald, cliuckling at tlie notion of eating up tlie hapless 
 Irish princes one by one, sent back the priest (not without a 
 present for liis church, for Ranald was a pious man) to tell 
 the great Feargus, that unless he sent into Waterford by that 
 day week, two hundred head of cattle, a liundred pigs, a hundred- 
 weight of clear lioney, and as much of wax, Ranald would not 
 leave so mucli as a sucking pig alive in Ivark. 
 
 The cause of quarrel, of course, was too unimportant to be 
 mentioned. Each had robbed and cheated the other half a 
 dozen times in the last twenty years. As for the moi'ality 
 of the transaction, Ranald had this salve for liis conscience, that 
 as he intended to do to Feargus, so would Feargus have gladly 
 done to him, had he been living peaceably in Norway, and been 
 strong enough to invade and rulj liini. Indeed, so had Feargus
 
 72 IIEREWARD THE AVAKE ciiAP. 
 
 done already, ever since he wore beard, to every chieftain of his 
 own race whom he was strong enough to ill-treat. Many a fair 
 herd had he driven off, many a fair farm burnt, many a fair 
 woman carried off a slave, after that inveterate fashion of law- 
 less feuds which makes the history of Celtic Ireland from the 
 earliest times one dull and aimless catalogue of murder and de- 
 vastation, followed by famine and disease ; and now as he had 
 done to others, so it was to be done to him. 
 
 'And now, young sir, who seem as witty as you are good- 
 looking, you may, if you Avill, tell us your name and your busi- 
 ness. As for the name, however, if you wish to keep it to 
 yourself, Ranald Sigtrygsson is not the man to demand it of an 
 honest guest.' 
 
 Hereward looked round, and saw Teague MacMurrough 
 standing close to him, harj:) in hand. He took it from him 
 courteously enough ; put a silver penny into the minstrel's 
 hand; and running his fingers over the strings, rose and 
 begaru 
 
 ' Outlaw and free thief 
 
 Landless and lawless 
 
 Through tlie world fare I, 
 
 Thoughtless of life. 
 
 Soft is my beard, but 
 
 Hard my Ijrain -biter. 
 
 "Wake, men me call, whom 
 
 Warrior and warden 
 
 Find ever watchful. 
 
 Ear in Northumberland 
 
 Slew I the witch-hear, 
 
 Cleaving his brain-pan, 
 
 At one stroke I felled him.' 
 
 And so forth, chanting all his doughty deeds, with such a 
 voice and spirit, joined to that musical talent for which he was 
 afterwards so famous, till the hearts of the wild Norsemen re- 
 joiced, and ' Skall to the stranger ! Skall to the young Viking ! ' 
 rang through the hall. 
 
 Then showing proudly the fresh wonnds on his bare arms, he 
 sang of his fight witli the Cornish ogre, and his adventure witli 
 the princess. But always, though he went into the most minute 
 details, lie concealed the name both of lier and of her father, 
 while he kept his eyes steadily fixed on Eanald's eldest son, 
 Sigtryg, who sat at his father's right hand. 
 
 The young man grew uneasy, red, almost angry ; till at last 
 Hereward sung : — 
 
 ' A gold ring she gave me 
 Right royally dwarf- worked, 
 To none M'ill I jiass it 
 For jirayer or for sword stroke,
 
 IV HOW HEREWARD TOOK SERVICE WITH RANALD 73 
 
 Save to liim who can claim it 
 By love and by troth plight, 
 Let that hero speak 
 If that hero be here.' 
 
 Young Sigtryg half started from his feet : but when Here- 
 ward smiled at liim, and laid his linger on his lips, he sat down 
 again. Hereward felt liis shoulder touched from behind. One 
 of the youths who liad risen when he sat down, bent over him, 
 and whispered in his ear — 
 
 ' All, Hereward, we know you. Do you not know us ? We 
 are the twins, the sons of your sister, 8iward the White and 
 Siward the Red, the ori)hans of Asbiorn tSiwardsson, who fell at 
 Dunsinane.' 
 
 Hereward sprang up, struck the harp again, and sang — 
 
 ' Ontlaw and free thief 
 My kinsfolk have left me, 
 And no kinsfolk need I, 
 Till kinsfolk shall need me. 
 Jly sword is my father, 
 j\Iy shield is my mother, 
 My ship is my sister, 
 My horse is my brother.' 
 
 'Uncle, uncle, whispered one of them sadly, 'listen now or 
 never, for we liave bad news for you and us. Your father is 
 dead, and Earl Algar, your brother, here in Ireland, outlawed a 
 second time.' 
 
 A flood of sorrow passed through Hereward's heart. He kept 
 it down, and rising once more, harjo in hand — 
 
 'Hereward, king, hight I. 
 Holy Leofric my father, 
 In Westminster wiser, 
 None walked with king Edward. 
 High minsters he builded, 
 Pale monks he maintained. 
 Dead is he, a bed-death, 
 A leech-death, a priest-death, 
 A straw-death, a cow's-death. 
 Such doom suits not me. 
 To high lieaven, all so softly, 
 The angels uphand him ; 
 In meads of May flowers 
 Mild Mary will meet him : 
 Me, happier, tlie Valkyrs 
 Sliall waft from the war-deck, 
 Shall hail from tlie holmgang 
 Or helmet-strewn moorland. 
 And sword strokes my shrift be, 
 Sharp spears be my leeches. 
 With heroes' hot corpses 
 High heaped for my pillow.'
 
 74 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' Skall to the Viking ! ' shouted the Danes once more, at tliis 
 outburst of heathendom, common enough among their half-con- 
 verted race, in times wlien monasticism made so utter a divorce 
 between tlie life of the devotee and that of the wordling, that it 
 seemed reasonable enough for either party to have their own 
 heaven and their own hell. After all, Hereward was not 
 original in his wish. He had but copied the death-song which 
 Siward Digre had sung for himself some three yeai's before. 
 
 All praised his poetry, and especially the quickness of his 
 alliterations (then a note of the highest art) ; and the old king, 
 filling not this time the horn, but a golden goblet, bid him drain 
 it and keep the goblet for his song. 
 
 Young Sigtryg leapt up, and took the cup to Hereward. 
 ' Such a scald,' he said, ' ought to have no meaner cup-bearer 
 than a king's son.' 
 
 Hereward drank it dry ; and then fixing his eyes meaningly 
 on the prince, dropt the princess' ring into the cup, and putting 
 it back into Sigtryg's hand, sang — 
 
 ' The beaker I reach back 
 More rich than I took it. 
 No gold will I grasp 
 Of the king's, the ring-giver, 
 Till, by wit or by weapon, 
 I worthily win it. 
 When felled by my faulchion 
 False Feargiis lies gory, i 
 
 While over the wolf's meal 
 Wild widows are wailing.' 
 
 'Does he refuse my gift ?' grumbled Eanald. 
 
 'He has given a fair reason,' said the prince, as he hid the 
 ring in his bosom ; ' leave him to me ; for my brother in arms 
 he is henceforth.' 
 
 After which, as was the custom of those parts, most of them 
 drank too much liquor. But neither Sigtryg nor Hereward 
 drank ; and the two Siwards stood behind their young uncle's 
 seat, watching him with that intense admiration which lads can 
 feel for a young liero. 
 
 That night, when the warriors were asleep, Sigtryg and 
 Hereward talked out their plans. They would equip two ships ; 
 they would fight all the kinglets of Cornwall at once, if need 
 was; they would carry off" tlie princess, and burn Alef's town 
 over liis head if he said nay. Nothing could be more simple 
 than the tactics required in an age when might was right. 
 
 Then Hereward turned to his two nephews, who lingered 
 near him, plainly big with news. 
 
 ' And what brings you here, lads 1 ' He had hardened his 
 heart, and made up his mind to show no kindness to his own 
 kin. The day might come wlien they might need him ; then it 
 would be his turn.
 
 IV HOW HEREWARD TOOK SERVICE WITH RANALD 75 
 
 ' Your father, as we told you, is dead.' 
 
 ' So much the better for him and the worse for England. And 
 Harold and tlie Godwinssons, of course, are lords and masters 
 far and wide ? ' 
 
 'Tosti has our grandfather Siward's earldom.' 
 
 ' I know that. I know, too, that he will not keep it long, un- 
 less he learns that Northumbrians are free men, and not Wessex 
 slaves.' 
 
 'And Algar our uncle is outlawed again, after King Edward 
 had given him peaceably your father's earldom.' 
 
 'And why?' 
 
 ' Wliy was he outlawed two years ago 1 ' 
 
 ' Because the Godwinssons hate him ; as they will hate you 
 in your turn.' 
 
 ' And Algar is gone to Griffin, the Welshman, and from him 
 on to Dublin, to get ships, just as he did two years ago ; and 
 has sent us here to get ships likewise.' 
 
 ' And what will he do with them when he has got them ? He 
 burnt Hereford last time he was outlawed, by way of a wise 
 deed, minster and all, with St. Ethelbert's relics on board ; and 
 slew seven priests : but they were only honest canons with wives 
 at home, and not shaveling monks, so I suppose that sin was easily 
 shrived. Well, I robbed a priest of a few pence, and was out- 
 lawed ; he plunders and burns a whole minster, and is made a 
 great earl for it. One law for the weak, and one for the strong, 
 young lads, as you will know when you are as old as I. And 
 now I suppose he will plunder and burn more minsters, and 
 then patch up a peace with Harold again ; which I advise him 
 strongly to do ; for I warn you, young lads, and you may carry 
 that message from me to Dublin to my good brother your uncle, 
 tliat Harold's little finger is thicker than his whole body ; and 
 that, false Goldwinsson as he is, he is the only man with a head 
 upon his shoulders left in England, now that his father and my 
 father, and dear old Siward, whom I loved better than my 
 father, are dead and gone.' 
 
 The lads stood silent, not a little awed, and indeed imposed 
 on, by the cynical and worldly-wise tone which their renowned 
 uncle had assumed. 
 
 At last one of them asked falteringly, 'Then you will do 
 nothing for us ? ' 
 
 'For you nothing. Against you nothing. Why should I mix 
 myself up in my brother's quarrels ? Will he make that white- 
 headed driveller at Westminster reverse my outlawry 1 And if 
 he does, what sliall I get thereby ? A younger brother's portion ; 
 a dirty oxgang of land in Kesteven. Let liiiu leave me alone as 
 I leave him, and see if I do not come back to him some day, for 
 or against him as he choo.ses, with such a host of Vikings' sons 
 as Harold Hardraade himself would be proud of. Jjy Thor's 
 hammer, boys, I have been an outlaw but five years now, and I
 
 76 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 find it so cheery a life, that I do not care if I am an outlaw for 
 fifty more. The world is a fine place and a wide place ; and it 
 is a very little corner of it that I liave seen yet ; and if you were 
 of my mettle, you would come along with me and see it through- 
 out to tlie four corners of heaven, instead of mixing yourselves 
 up in these paltry little quarrels with which our two families 
 are tearing England in pieces, and being murdered perchance 
 like dogs at last by treachery, as Sweyn Godwinsson murdered 
 Biorn Ulfsson, his own cousin.' 
 
 The boys listened, wide-eyed and wide -eared. Here ward 
 knew to whom he was speaking ; and he liad not spoken in 
 vain. 
 
 ' What do you hope to get here ? ' he went on. ' Eanald will 
 give you no ships : he will have enough to do to tight this 
 Feargus ; and he is too cunning to thrust his head into Algar's 
 quarrels.' 
 
 ' We hoped to find Vikings here who would go to any war in 
 the hope of plunder.' 
 
 ' If there be any, I want them more than you ; and what is 
 more, I will have them. They know that they will do finer 
 deeds with me for their captain, than burning a few English 
 homesteads. And so may you. Come with me, lads. Once and 
 for all, come. Help me to fight Feargus. Then help me to 
 another little adventure which I have on hand — as pretty a one 
 as ever you heard a minstrel sing — and then we will fit out a 
 large ship or two, and go where fate leads — to Constantinople, 
 if you like. What can you do better ? You never will get that 
 earldom from Tosti. Lucky for young Waltheof, your uncle, if 
 he gets it — if he, and you too, are not murdered within seven 
 years ; for I know Tosti's humour, when he has rivals in his 
 way ' 
 
 ' Algar will protect us,' said one. 
 
 ' I tell you, Algar is no match for the Godwinssons. If the 
 monk-king died to-morrow, neither his earldom nor his life 
 would be safe. When I saw your father Asbiorn Bulax lie dead 
 at Dunsinane, I said, "There ends the glory of the house of the 
 bear"; and if you wish to make my words come false, then leave 
 England to founder, and rot and fall to pieces — as all men say 
 she is doing — without your helping to hasten her ruin ; and seek 
 glory and wealth too with me around the world ! The white 
 bear's blood is in your veins, lads. T-ake to the sea like your 
 forefather, and come over the swan's bath with me ! ' 
 
 ' That we will,' said the two lads. And well they kept their 
 word.
 
 HOW HE SUCCOURED THE PRINCESS AGAIN 77 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 HOW HEREWAED SUCCOURED THE PRINCESS OF CORNWALL A 
 
 SECOND TIME 
 
 Fat was the feasting, and loud was the harping, in the halls of 
 Alef, King of Gweek. Savoury was the smell of fried pilchard 
 and hake ; more savoury still that of roast porpoise ; most 
 savoury of all that of fifty huge squab pies, built up of layers of 
 api^les, bacon, onions, and mutton, and at tlie bottom of each a 
 squab, or young cormorant, which diffused both through the pie 
 and through the ambient air, a delicate odour of mingled guano 
 and polecat. And the occasion was worthy alike of the smell 
 and of the noise ; for King Alef, finding that after the Ogre's 
 death the neighbouring kings were but too ready to make 
 reprisals on him for his champion's murders and robberies, had 
 made a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, with Hannibal, 
 the son of Gryll, King of Marazion, and had confirmed the same 
 by bestowing on him the hand of his fair daughter. Whether 
 she approved of the match or not, was asked neither by King 
 Alef nor by King Hannibal. 
 
 To-night was the bi'idal feast. To-morrow morning tlie 
 church was to hallow the union, and after that Hannibal Grylls 
 was to lead home his bride, among a gallant company. 
 
 And as they ate and drank, and harped and piped, there 
 came into that hall four shabbily drest men — one of them a 
 short, broad fellow, with black elf-locks and a red beard — and 
 sat them down sneakingly at the very lowest end of all the 
 benches. 
 
 In hospitable Cornwall, especially on such a day, every guest 
 was welcome ; and the strangers sat peaceably, but ate nothing, 
 though there was both hake and pilchard within reach. 
 
 Next to them, by chance, sat a great lourdan of a Dane, as 
 honest, brave, and stupid a fellow as ever tugged at oar ; and 
 after a while they fell talking, till the strangers had heard the 
 reason of this great feast, and all the news of the country side. 
 
 'But whence did they come, not to know it already ; for all 
 Cornwall was talking thereof?' 
 
 'Oh — they came out of Devonshire, seeking service down 
 west with some merchant or rover, being seafaring men.' 
 
 The stranger with the black hair had been, meanwhile, 
 earnestly watching the princess, who sat at the board's head. 
 He saw her watching him in return ; and with a face sad 
 enougli. 
 
 At last she burst into tears. 
 
 'What should the bride weej) for, at such a merry wedding?' 
 asked he of his companion.
 
 78 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 'Oh — cause enough;' and he told bluntly enough the 
 princess' story. 'And what is more,' said he, 'the King of 
 Waterford sent a ship over last week, with forty proper lads on 
 board, and two gallant Holders with them, to demand her ; but 
 for all answer, they were put into the strong house, and there 
 they lie, chained to a log, at this minute. Pity it is, and shame, 
 I hold, for I am a Dane myself ; and pity, too, that such a bonny 
 lass should go to an unkempt Welshman like this, instead of a 
 tight smart Viking's son, like the Waterford lad.' 
 
 The stranger answered nothing : but kept his eyes upon the 
 princess, till she looked at him stedfastly in return. 
 
 She turned pale and red again : but after a while she spoke. 
 
 ' There is a stranger there ; and what his rank may be I know 
 not : but he has been thrust down to the lowest seat, in a 
 house that used to honour strangers, instead of treating them 
 like slaves. Let him take this dish from my hand, and eat joy- 
 fully, lest when he goes home he may speak scorn of bridegroom 
 and bride, and our Cornish weddings.' 
 
 The servant brought the dish down : he gave a look at the 
 sti-anger's shabby dress, turned up his nose, and pretending to 
 mistake, put the dish into the hand of the Dane. 
 
 'Hold, lads,' quoth the stranger. 'If I have ears, that was 
 meant for me.' 
 
 He seized the platter with both hands ; and therewith the 
 hands both of the Cornishman and of the Dane. There was a 
 struggle : but so bitter was the stranger's gripe, that (says the 
 chronicler) the blood burst from the nails of both his opponents. 
 
 He was called a ' savage,' a ' devil in man's shape,' and other 
 dainty names, but he was left to eat his squab pie in peace. 
 
 'Patience, lads,' quoth lie, as he filled his mouth. 'Before I 
 take my pleasure at this wedding, I will hand my own dish 
 round, as well as any of you.' 
 
 Whereat men wondered, but held their tongues. 
 
 And when the eating was over and the drinking began, the 
 princess rose, and came round to drink the farewell health. 
 
 With her maids behind her, and her harper before her (so was 
 the Cornish custom), she pledged one by one each of the guests, 
 slave as well as free, while the harper 2:)layed a tune. 
 
 She came down at last to the strangers. Her face was pale, 
 and her eyes red with weeping. 
 
 She filled a cup of wine, and one of her maids oftered it to 
 the strangei". 
 
 He put it back courteously, but firmly. 'Not from your 
 liand,' said he. 
 
 A growl against his bad manners rose straightway ; and the 
 minstrel, who (as often happened in those days) was jester like- 
 wise, made merry at his expense, and advised the company to 
 turn the wild Ijeast out of tlie hall. 
 
 'Silence, fool ! ' said the princess. 'Why should he know our
 
 V HOW HE SUCCOURED THE PRINCESS AGAIN 79 
 
 West-country ways 1 He may take it from my hand, if not 
 from hers.' 
 
 And she held out to him the cup herself. 
 
 He took it, looking her steadily in tlie face ; and it seemed 
 to the minstrel as if their hands lingered together round the 
 cup-handle, and that he saw the glitter of a ring. 
 
 Like many another of his craft before and since, he was a 
 vain, meddlesome vagabond, and must needs pry into a secret 
 which certainly did not concern him. 
 
 So he could not leave the stranger in peace ; and knowing 
 that his privileged calling protected him from that formidable 
 fist, he never passed him by without a sneer or a jest, as he 
 wandered round the table, offering his harp, in the Cornish 
 fashion, to any one who wished to play and sing. 
 
 ' But not to you. Sir Elf-locks : he that is rude to a jDretty 
 girl when she offers him wine, is too great a boor to understand 
 my trade.' 
 
 ' It is a fool's trick,' answered the stranger at last, ' to put off 
 what you must do at last. If I had but the time, I would pay 
 you for your tune with a better one than you ever lieard.' 
 
 ' Take the harp, then, boor ! ' said the minstrel, with a laugh 
 and a jest. 
 
 The stranger took it, and drew from it such music as made 
 all heads turn toward him at once. Then he began to sing, 
 sometimes by himself; and sometimes his comrades, ''more 
 Girviorum tripliciter canentes,^ joined their voices in a Fenmen's 
 three-man-glee. 
 
 In vain the minstrel, jealous for his own credit, tried to 
 snatch the harp away. The stranger sang on, till all hearts 
 Avere softened ; and the princess, taking the rich shawl from 
 her shoulders, threw it over those of the stranger, saying that 
 it was a gift too poor for such a scald. 
 
 ' Scald ! ' roared the bridegroom (now well in his cups) from 
 the head of the table; 'ask what thou wilt, short of my bride 
 and my kingdom, and it is thine.' 
 
 'Give me, then, Hannibal Grylls, King of Marazion, the 
 Danes who came from Ranald of Waterford.' 
 
 * You sliall have them ! Pity that you have asked for nothing 
 better than such tarry ruffians.' 
 
 A few minutes after, the minstrel, bursting with jealousy and 
 rage, was whispering in Hannibal's ear. 
 
 The hot old Punic ^ blood flushed up in his cheeks, and his 
 thin Punic lips curved into a snaky smile. Perhaps tlie old 
 Punic treachery in his heart ; for all that Hannibal was heard 
 to reply was, 'We must not disturb the good-fellowship of a 
 Cornisii wedding.' 
 
 ^ Hannibal, still a common name in Cornwall, is held — and not 
 Miilikely — to have been intiolucud tliere by ancient Phccnician colonists.
 
 80 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 The stranger, nevertheless, and the princess likewise, had 
 seen that bitter smile. 
 
 Men drank hard and long that night : and when daylight 
 came, the strangers were gone. 
 
 In the morning the marriage ceremony was performed ; and 
 then began the pageant of leading home the bride. The 
 minstrels went first, harping and piping : then King Hannibal, 
 carrying his bride behind liim on a pillion ; and after them a 
 string of servants and men-at-arms, leading country ponies 
 laden with the bride's dower. Along with them, unarmed, 
 sulky, and suspicious, walked the forty Danes, who were in- 
 formed that they should go to Marazion, and there be shipped 
 off for Ireland. 
 
 Now, as all men know, those parts of Cornwall, flat and open 
 furze -downs aloft, are cut, for many miles inland, by long 
 brandies of tide river, walled in by woods and rocks ; and by 
 crossing one or more of these, the bridal party would save 
 many a mile on their road towards the west. 
 
 So they had timed their journey by the tides ; lest, finding 
 low water in the rivers, they should have to wade to the ferry- 
 boats waist-deep in mud ; and going down the steep hillside, 
 through oak, and asli, and hazel-copse, they entered, as many 
 as could, a great flat-bottomed barge, and were rowed across 
 some quarter of a mile, to land under a jutting crag, and go up 
 again by a similar path into the woods. 
 
 So the first boat-load went up, the minstrels in front, harping 
 and piping till the greenwood rang ; King Hannibal next, with 
 his bride; and behind him spear -men and axe -men, with a 
 Dane between every two. 
 
 When they had risen some two hundred feet, and were in the 
 heart of the forest, Hannibal turned, and made a sign to the 
 men behind him. 
 
 Then each pair of them seized the Dane between them, and 
 began to bind his hands behind his back. 
 
 ' What Avill you do with us ? ' 
 
 ' Send you back to Ireland, — a king never breaks his word, — 
 but pick out your right eyes first, to show your master how 
 much I care for him. Lucky for you that I leave you an eye 
 apiece, to find your friend the harper, whom, if I catch, I flay 
 alive.' 
 
 ' You promised ! ' cried the printjess. 
 
 'And so did you, traitress ! ' and he gripped her arm, whicli 
 was round his waist, till she screamed. ' So did you promise : 
 but not to me. And you shall pass your bridal niglit in my 
 dog-kennel, after my dog-whip has taught you not to give rings 
 again to wandering harpers.' 
 
 ' The wretched jDrincess shuddered ; for she knew too well that 
 such an atrocity was easy and common enough. She knew it 
 well. Why should she not 1 The story of the Cid's Daughters
 
 V HOW HE SUCCOURED THE PRINCESS AGAIN 81 
 
 and the knights of Carrion ; the far more authentic one of 
 Eobert of Belesme ; and many another ugly tale of the early 
 middle age, will prove but too certainly tliat, before the days of 
 chivalry began, neither youth, beauty, nor the sacred ties of 
 matrimony, could protect women from the most horrible out- 
 rages at the hands of those who should have been their 
 protectors. 
 
 But the words had hardly passed the lips of Hannibal, ere he 
 reeled in the saddle, and fell to the ground with a javelin 
 through his heart. 
 
 A strong arm caught the princess. A voice which she knew 
 bade her have no fear. 
 
 ' Bind your horse to a tree, for we shall want him ; and 
 wait.' 
 
 Three well-armed men rushed on the nearest Cornishmen, 
 and hewed them down. A fourth unbound the Dane, and bade 
 him catch up a weapon and tiglit for his life. 
 
 A second pair were dispatched, a second Dane freed, ere a 
 minute was over ; the Cornishmen, struggling up the narrow 
 path toward the shouts above, were overpowered in detail by 
 continually increasing numbers ; and ere half an hour was over 
 the whole party were freed, mounted on the ponies, and making 
 their way over the downs toward the west. 
 
 ' Noble, noble Hereward ! — The Wake indeed ! ' said the 
 princess, as she sat behind him on Hannibal's horse. ' I knew 
 you from the first moment ; and my nurse knew you too. Is 
 she here 1 Is she safe 1 ' 
 
 ' I have taken care of that. She has done us too good service 
 to be left here and be hanged.' 
 
 'I knew you, in spite of your hair, by your eyes.' 
 
 'Yes,' said Hereward. 'It is not every man who carries one 
 gray eye and one blue. The more difiicult for me to go mum- 
 ming when I need.' 
 
 ' But how came you hither, of all places in the world 1 ' 
 
 'When you sent your nurse to me last night, to warn me 
 that treason was abroad, it was easy for me to ask your road to 
 Marazion ; and easier too, when I found that you would go 
 home the very way we came, to know that I must make my 
 stand here or nowhere.' 
 
 ' The way you came ? Then where are we going now 1 ' 
 
 ' Beyond Marazion, to a little cove — I cannot tell its name. 
 There lies Sigtryg your betrothed, and three good ships of war.' 
 
 'There? Why did he not come for me himself?' 
 
 'Why ? Because we knew nothing of what was toward. We 
 meant to have sailed straight up your river to your father's 
 town, and taken you out with a high hand. We had sworn an 
 oath— which, as you saw, I kept — neither to eat nor drink in 
 your house, save out of your own hands. But the easterly wind 
 would not let us round the Lizard ; so we put into that cove, 
 
 G II. T. w.
 
 82 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 and tliere I and these two lads, my nephews, offered to go 
 forward as spies, while Sigtryg threw up an earthwork, and 
 made a stand against the Cornish. We meant merely to go 
 back to him, and give him news. But when I found you as 
 good as wedded, I had to do what I could, while I could ; and I 
 have done it, like a Wake as I am.' 
 
 'You have, my noble and true champion,' said she, kissing 
 him. 
 
 'Hum])h!' quoth Hereward, laughing. 'Do not tempt me 
 by being too grateful. It is hard enoug-h to gather honey, like 
 the bees, for other folks to eat. What if I kept you myself, 
 now I have got you ? ' 
 
 ' Hereward ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, there is no fear, pretty lady. I have other things to 
 wake over than making love to you — and one is, how we are to 
 get to our ships, and, moreover, past Marazion town.' 
 
 And hard work they had to get thither. The county was 
 soon roused and up in arms ; and it was only by wandering a 
 three days' circuit, through bogs and moors, till the ponies were 
 utterly tired out, and left behind (the bulkier part of the dowry 
 being left with tliem), that they made their appearance on the 
 shore of Mount's Bay, Hereward leading the princess in triumph 
 upon Hannibal's horse. 
 
 After which they all sailed away for Ireland, and there, like 
 young Beichan — 
 
 ' Prepared another wedding, 
 AVitli all their hearts so full of glee." 
 
 And this is the episode of the Cornish princess, as told (the 
 outlines of it at least) by Richard of Ely, after Leofric the 
 mass-priest's manuscrijit. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 HOW HEREWARD WAS WRECKED UPON THE FLANDERS SHORE 
 
 Hereward had drunk his share at Sigtryg's wedding. He had 
 helped to harry the lands of Feargus till (as King Eanald had 
 threatened) there was not a sucking pig left in Ivark, and the 
 poor folk died of famine, as thfey diet about every seven years ; 
 he had burst (says the chronicler) through the Irish camp with 
 a chosen band of Berserkers, slain Feargus in his tent, brought 
 off his war -horn as a trophy, and cut his way back to the 
 Danish army — a feat in wliich the two Siwards were grievously 
 wounded ; and had in all things shown himself a daring and 
 wakeful captain, as careless of his own life as of other folks'. 
 Then a great home-sickness had seized him. He would go
 
 VI HOW HEREWARD WAS WRECKED 83 
 
 back and see the old house, and the cattle pastures, and the 
 meres and fens of his boyhood. He would see his widowed 
 mother. Perliaps her heart was softened to him by now, as his 
 was toward her : and if not, he could show her that he could do 
 Avithout her ; tliat others thought him a fine fellow if she did 
 not. Hereward knew that he had won honour and glory for 
 himself; that tlie Wake's name was in the mouths of all 
 warriors and sea-rovers round the coasts as the most likely 
 young champion of the time, able to rival, if he had the oppor- 
 tunity, the prowess of Harold Hardraade himself.^ Yes, he 
 would go and see his mother : he would be kind if she was 
 kind ; if she were not, he would boast and swagger, as he was 
 Ijut too apt to do. That he should go back at the risk of his 
 life ; that any one who found him on English ground might kill 
 liim ; and that many would certainly tiy to kill him, he knew 
 very well. But that only gave special zest to the adventure. 
 
 Martin Lightfoot heard this news with joy. 
 
 'I have no more to do here,' said he. 'I have searched and 
 asked far and wide for tlie man I want, but he is not on the 
 Irish shores. Some say he is gone to the Orkneys, some to 
 Denmark. Never mind ; I shall find him before I die.' 
 
 ' And for whom art looking ? ' 
 
 ' For one Thord Gunlaugsson, my father.' 
 
 ' And what wantest thou with him ? ' 
 
 ' To put this through his brain.' And he showed his axe. 
 
 ' Thy father's brain r 
 
 'Look you, lord. A man owes his father nought, and his 
 mother all. At least, so hold I. " Man that is of woman born,' 
 say all the world ; and they say right. Now, if any man hang 
 up that mother by hands and feet, and flog her to death, is not 
 he that is of that mother born bound to revenge her upon any 
 man, and all tlie more if that man had first his wicked will of 
 that poor mother 1 Considering that last, lord, I do not know 
 l)ut what I am bound to avenge my mother's shame upon the 
 man, even if he had never killed her. No, lord, you need not 
 try to talk this out of my head. It has been there nigh twenty 
 years ; and I say it over to myself every night before I sleep, 
 U;st I should forget the one thing which I must do beforel die. 
 Find liim I will, and find him I shall, if there be justice in 
 lieaven above.' 
 
 So Hereward asked Pianald for sliips, and got at once two 
 good vessels, as payment for his doughty deeds. 
 
 One he christened the (TCirpike, from her narrow build and 
 long beak, and the other tlie Otter, because, he said, whatever 
 she grappled she would never let go till she heard tlie bones 
 crack. They were excellent new 'snekrs,' nearly eighty feet 
 long each ; with double banks for twelve oars a side in the 
 waist, wliicli was open, save a figliting gangway along the sides ; 
 with high poop and forecastle decks ; and with one large sail
 
 84 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 apiece, embroidered by Sigtryg's princess and the other ladies 
 with a huge white bear, which Hereward had chosen as his 
 ensign. 
 
 As for men, there were fifty fellows as desperate as Here- 
 ward liimself, to take service with him for that or any other 
 quest. So tliey ballasted their ships with great pebbles, stowed 
 under the thwarts, to be used as ammunition in case of boarding ; 
 and over them the barrels of ale, and pork, and meal, well 
 covered with tarpaulins. They stowed in the cabins fore and 
 aft their weapons — swords, spears, axes, bows, chests of arrow- 
 heads, leather bags of bowstrings, mail-sliirts and helmets, and 
 fine clothes for holidays and fighting days. They hung their 
 shields, after tlie old fashion, outboard along the gunnel, and a 
 right gay show they made ; and so rowed out of Waterford 
 harbour amid the tears of tlie ladies and the cheers of the men. 
 
 But, as it befell, the voyage did not prosper. Hereward found 
 his vessels under-manned, and had to sail northward for fresh 
 hands. He got none in Dublin, for they were all gone to the 
 Welsh marches to help Earl Alfgar and King Griffin. So he 
 went on through the Hebrides, intending, of course, to plunder 
 as he went : but there he got but little booty, and lost several 
 men. So he went on again to the Orkneys to try for fresh 
 hands from the Norse earls thereof : but there befell a fresh 
 mishap. They were followed by a whale, which they made sure 
 was a witch-wliale, and boded more ill luck ; and accordingly 
 they were struck by a storm in the Pentland Fi'ith, and the 
 poor Garpike went on shore on Hoy, and was left there for ever 
 and a day, her crew being hardly saved, and very little of her 
 cargo. 
 
 However, the Otter was now not only manned, but over- 
 manned ; and Hereward had to leave a dozen stout fellows with 
 Earl Bruce in Kirkwall, and sailed southward again, singing 
 cheerily to his men — 
 
 ' Lightly the long-snake 
 Leaps after tempests, 
 Gaily the sun -gleam 
 Glows after rain. 
 In laljour and daring 
 Lies luck for all mortals, 
 Foul winds and foul witch wives 
 Fray women alone.' 
 
 But their mishaps were not over yet. They were liardly out 
 of Stronsay Firth wlien they saw the witch-whale again, follow- 
 ing them up, rolling, and spouting, and breaching, in most 
 uncanny wise. Some said tliat they saw a gray woman on his 
 back ; and they knew, pos.sibly from the look of the sky, but 
 certainly from the whale's beliaviour, that there was more 
 heavy weatlier yet coming from the northward.
 
 VI HOW HEREWARD WAS WRECKED 85 
 
 From that day forward the whale never left them, nor the 
 wild weather either. They were beaten out of all reckoning. 
 Once they thought they saw low land to the eastward, but wliat 
 or where, who could tell 1 and as for making it, the wind, which 
 had blown hard from north-east, backed against the sun and 
 blew from west ; from whicli, as well as from the witch-whale, 
 they expected another gale from north and round to north- 
 east. 
 
 The men grew^ sulky and fearful. Some were for trying to 
 run the wdtch down and break her back, as did Frithiof in like 
 case, when hunted by a whale with two hags upon liis back — an 
 excellent recipe in sucli cases, but somewhat difficult in a heavy 
 sea. Others said that there was a doomed man on board, and 
 proposed to cast lots till they found him out, and cast him into 
 the sea, as a saci-iiice to ./Egir the wave-god. But Hereward 
 scouted that as unmanly and cowardly, and sang — 
 
 ' Witli lilood of my bold ones 
 With bale of luy comrades, 
 Thinks iEgir, brine-thirsty, 
 His throat he can slake ? 
 Though salt spray, shrill-sounding, 
 Sweej) round in swan's-flights, 
 True hearts, troth-plighted, 
 Together we'll die. ' 
 
 At last, after many days, their strength was all but worn 
 out. Tliey had long since given over rowing, and contented 
 themselves with running under a close-reefed canvas whitherso- 
 ever the storm should choose. At night a sea bi'oke over them, 
 and would have swamped the Otter, had she not been the best 
 of sea-boats. But she only rolled the lee shields into the water 
 and out again, shook herself, and went on. Nevertheless, there 
 were three men on the jDOop when the sea came in, who were 
 not there when it went out. 
 
 Wet and wild dawned that morning, sliowing naught but 
 gray sea and gray air. Then sang Hereward — 
 
 ' Cheerly, my sea-cocks, 
 Crow for the day-dawn. 
 Weary and wet are we, 
 AVater beladen. 
 Wetter our comrades, 
 Wlielmed by tlie witch-whales. 
 Us M</iv granted 
 (trudging, to Gondnl, 
 Doomed to die dry-shod, 
 Daring the foe.' 
 
 Whereat tlie liearts of the men were much clieered. 
 
 All of a sudden, as is the wont of gales at dawn, the clouds
 
 86 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 rose, tore up into ribands, and witli a fierce black sliower or 
 two, blew clean away, disclosing a bright blue sky, a green 
 rolling sea, and a few miles oft" to leeward a pale yellow line, 
 seen only as they topped a wave, but seen only too well. To 
 keep the ship oft' shore was impossible ; and as they drifted 
 nearer and nearer, the line of sand-hills rose, uglier and more 
 formidable, through the gray spray of the surf. 
 
 ' We shall die on shore, but not dry-shod,' said Martin. ' Do 
 any of you knights of the tar brush know whether we are going 
 to be drowned in Christian waters ? I should like a mass or two 
 for my soul, and shall die the happier within sight of a church 
 tower.' 
 
 ' One dune is as like another as one pea ; we may be any- 
 where between the Texel and Cap Gris Nez, but I think nearer 
 the latter than the former.' 
 
 'So much the worse for us,' said another. 'If we had gone 
 ashore among those Frieslanders, we should have been only 
 knocked on the head outright ; but if we fall among the French- 
 men, we shall be clapt in prison strong, and tortured till we find 
 ransom.' 
 
 ' I don't see that,' said Martin. ' We can all be drowned if 
 we like, I suppose ? " 
 
 ' Drowned we need not be, if we be men,' said the old sailing- 
 master to Hereward. ' The tide is full high, and that gives us 
 one chance for our lives. Keep her head straight, and row like 
 fiends when we are once in the surf, and then beach her up high 
 and dry and take what befalls after.' 
 
 And what was likely to befall was ugly enough. Tlien, as 
 centuries after, all wrecks and wrecked men were public prey ; 
 shipwrecked mariners were liable to be sold as slaves ; and the 
 petty counts of the French and Flemish shores were but too 
 likely to extract ransom by prison and torture, as Guy, Earl of 
 Pontliieu, would have done (so at least William, Duke of Nor- 
 mandy, liinted) hy Harold Godwinsson, had not William, for 
 his own politic ends, begged the release of the shipwrecked 
 earl. 
 
 Already they had been seen from the beach. The country 
 folk, who were prowling about the shore after tlie waifs of the 
 storm, deserted_ jetsom and lagend, and crowded to meet the 
 richer prize which was coming in ftotsom, to become jetsom in 
 its turn. 
 
 'Axemen and bowmen, put on your harness, and be ready; 
 but neither strike nor shoot till I give the word. We must 
 land peaceably if we can : if not, we will die fighting.' 
 
 So said Hereward, and took the rudder into his own liand. 
 'Now then,' as she rushed into the breakers, 'pull together, 
 rowers all, and with a will.' 
 
 Tlie men yelled, and sprang from the thwarts as they tugged 
 at the oars. The sea boiled past them, surged into the waist
 
 VI HOW HEREWARD WAS WRECKED 87 
 
 blinded them with spray. The Otter grazed the sand once, 
 twice, thrice, leaping forward gallantly each time ; and then, 
 pressed by a huge wave, drove high and dry upon the beach, as 
 the oars snapt right and left, and the men tumbled over each 
 other in heaps. 
 
 The peasants swarmed down like flies to a carcase : but they 
 recoiled as there rose over the forecastle bulwarks, not the 
 broad hats of peaceful buscarles, but peaked helmets, round red 
 shields, and glittering axes. They drew back, and one or two 
 arrows flew from the crowd into the ship. But at Hereward's 
 command no arrows were shot in answer. 
 
 ' Bale her out quietly ; and let us show these fellows that we 
 are not afraid of them. That is the best chance of peace.' 
 
 At this moment a mounted party came down between the 
 sand-hills : it might be, some twenty strong. Before them rode 
 a boy on a jennet, and by him a clerk, as he seemed, upon a 
 mule. They stopped to talk with the peasants, and then to 
 consult among themselves. 
 
 Suddenly the boy turned from liis party; and galloping 
 down the shore, while the clerk called after_ him in vain, reined 
 up his horse fetlock deep in water, within ten yards of the 
 ship's bows. 
 
 ' Yield yourselves ! ' he shouted in French, as he brandished 
 a hunting spear. ' Yield yourselves, or die ! ' 
 
 Hereward looked at him smiling, as he sat there, keeping the 
 head of his frightened horse toward the ship with hand and 
 heel, his long locks streaming in the wind, his face full of 
 courage and command, and of honesty and sweetness withal ; 
 and thought that he had never seen so fair a lad. 
 
 ' And who art thou, thou pretty bold boy 1 ' asked Hereward 
 in French. 
 
 'I,' said he, haughtily enough, as resenting Hereward's 
 familiar 'thou,' 'am Arnoul,^ grandson and heir of Baldwin, 
 Marquis of Flanders, and lord of this land. And to his grace I 
 call on you to surrender yourselves.' 
 
 Hereward looked, not only with interest, but respect, upon 
 the grandson of one of the most famous and prosperous of 
 northern potentates, the descendant of the mighty Charlemagne 
 himself. He turned and told the men who the boy was. 
 
 ' It would be a good trick,' quoth one, ' to catch that young 
 whelp, and keep him as a hostage.' 
 
 1 The French language was at this epoch taking the place of the Teu- 
 tonic in Southern Flanders : and the boy would call himself Arnoul, 
 while old men would persist in calling him Arnulf, after the fashion of 
 that Count of Guisnes, who, when upon his death-bed, heard his nephew 
 speak to him in Frentdi, and told him that he had no more time for trifles 
 and jests — Nugis et joeis se non posse vacare. Lamb. Ard. in Kervyu de 
 Lettenhoven Hist, de Flandre.
 
 88 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' Here is what will have him on board before he can turn,' 
 said another, as he made a running-noose in a rope. 
 
 ' Quiet, men ' Am I master in this ship, or you ? ' 
 
 Hereward saluted the lad courteously. 'Verily the blood of 
 Baldwin of tlie Iron Arm has not degenerated. I am happy to 
 behold so noble a son, of so noble a race.' 
 
 ' And who are you, who speak French so well, and yet by 
 your dress are neither French nor Fleming ? ' 
 
 ' I am Harold Naemansson, the Viking ; and these my men. 
 I am here, sailing peaceably for England ; as for yielding — 
 mine yield to no living man, but die as we are, weapon in hand. 
 I have heard of your grandfather, that lie is a just man and a 
 bountiful ; tlierefore take this message to him, young sir. If 
 he have wars toward, I and my men will fight for him with all 
 our might, and earn hospitality and ransom with our only 
 treasure, which is our sword. But if he be at peace, then let 
 him bid us go in peace, for we are Vikings, and must fight, or 
 rot and die.' 
 
 ' You are Vikings ? ' cried the boy, pressing his horse into the 
 foam so eagerly, that the men, mistaking his intent, had to be 
 represt again by Hereward. 'You are Vikings! Then come 
 on shore, and welcome. You shall be my friends. You shall 
 be my brothers. I will answer to my grandfather. I have 
 longed to see Vikings. I long to be a Viking myself.' 
 
 ' By the hammer of Thor,' cried the old master, ' and thou 
 woukist make a bonny one, my lad.' 
 
 Hereward hesitated ; delighted witli the boy, but by no 
 means sure of his power to protect them. 
 
 But the boy rode back to his companions, and talked and 
 gesticulated eagerly. 
 
 Then the clerk rode down, and talked with Hereward. 
 
 'Are you Christians?' shouted he, before he would adventure 
 himself near the ship. 
 
 ' Christians we are, sir clerk, and dare do no harm to a man 
 of God.' 
 
 The clerk rode nearer ; his handsome palfrey, furry cloak, 
 rich gloves and boots, moreover his air of command, showed 
 that he was no common man. 
 
 'I,' said he, 'am the abbot of St. Bertin of Sithiu, and tutor 
 of yonder prince. I can bring down, at a word, against you, 
 the chatelain of St. Omer with all liis knights, beside knights 
 and men-at-arms of my own. But I am a man of peace, and 
 not of war ; and would have no blood shed if I can help it.' 
 
 ' Then make peace,' said Hereward. 'Your lord may kill us 
 if he will, or have us for his guests if he will. If he does the 
 first, we shall kill, each of us, a few of his men before we die ; 
 if the latter, we sliall kill a few of his foes. If you be a man of 
 God, you will counsel him accordingly.' 
 
 ' Alas ! alas ! ' said the abbot with a shudder, ' that, ever since
 
 VI HOW HEREWARD WAS WRECKED 89 
 
 Adam's fall, sinful man should talk of nothing but slaying and 
 being slain • not knowing that his soul is slain already by sin, 
 and that a worse deatli awaits him hereafter than that death of 
 the body, of which he makes so light ! ' 
 
 'A very good sermon, my lord abbot, to listen to next 
 Sunday morning : but we are hungry, and wet, and desperate 
 just now ; and if you do not settle this matter for us, our blood 
 will be on your head — and maybe your own likewise.' 
 
 The abbot rode out of the water faster than he had ridden 
 in ; and a fresh consultation ensued, after which the boy, with 
 a warning gesture to his comj^anions, turned and galloped away 
 through the sand-hills. 
 
 ' He is gone to his gi^andfather himself, I verily believe,' 
 quoth Hereward. 
 
 They waited for some two hours, unmolested ; and, true to 
 their policy of seeming recklessness, shifted and dried them- 
 selves as well as they could ; ate what provisions were unspoilt 
 by the salt water, and, broaching the last barrel of ale, drank 
 healths to each other and to the Flemings on shore. 
 
 At last down rode with the boy a noble-looking man, and 
 behind him knights and men-at-arms. He announced himself 
 as the chatelain of St. Omer,^ and repeated the demand to 
 surrender. 
 
 ' There is no need for it,' said Hereward. ' We are already 
 that young prince's guests. He has said that we shall be his 
 friends and brothers. He has said that he will answer to his 
 grandfather, the great marquis, whom 1 and mine shall be 
 proud to serve. I claim the word of a descendant of Charle- 
 magne.' 
 
 ' And you shall have it ! ' cried the boy. ' Chatelain ! Abbot ! 
 these men are mine. Tliey shall come with me, and lodge in 
 St. Bertin.' 
 
 'Heaven forfend ! ' murmured tlie abbot. 
 
 ' They will be safe, at least, within your ramparts,' whispered 
 the chatelain. 
 
 'And they sliall tell me about the sea. Have I not told you 
 how I longed for Vikings ; how I will liave Vikings of my own, 
 and sail tlie seas with them, like my uncle Eobert, and go to 
 Spain and figlit the Moors, and to Constantinople and marry 
 the Kaiser's daughter 1 Come,' he cried to Hereward, ' come 
 on shore, and he that touches you or your ship, touches me ! ' 
 
 ' Sir Chatelain and my Lord Abbot,' said Hereward, ' you see 
 that, Viking though I be, I am no barbarous heathen, but a 
 
 ^ The chronicler .says, ' Manasar Count of that land.' But I can find 
 no such jierson in history. There was a Manasses, Count of Guisnes, 
 about that time ; but, as will be seen, it could not have been he who re- 
 ceived Hereward. I have supposed, therefore, as most probable, that the 
 act was that of the chatelain of St. Ouicr. One Waleric held that post in 
 1072.
 
 90 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 French-speaking gentleman like yourselves. It had been easy 
 for me, had I not been a man of honour, to have cast a rope, as 
 my sailors would have had me do, over that young boy's fair 
 head, and haled him on board, to answer for my life with his 
 own. But I loved him at first sight, and trusted him, as I 
 would an angel out of heaven ; and I trust him still. To him, 
 and him only, will I yield myself, on condition that I and my 
 men shall keep all our arms and treasure, and enter his service, 
 to fight his foes and his grandfather's, wheresoever they will, 
 by land or sea.' 
 
 ' Fair sir ' said the abbot, ' pirate though you call yourself, 
 you speak so courtly and clerkly that I, too, am inclined to 
 trust you ; and if my young lord will have it so, into St. Bertin 
 I will receive you, till our lord the marquis shall give orders 
 about you and yours.' 
 
 So promises were given all I'ound ; and Hereward explained 
 the matter to the men, without whose advice (for they were all 
 as free as himself) he could not act. 
 
 ' Needs must,' grunted they, as they packed up each his little 
 valuables. 
 
 Then Hereward sheathed his sword, and leaping from the 
 bow, came up to the boy. 
 
 ' Put your hands between his, fair sir,' said the chatelain. 
 
 ' That is not the manner of Vikings.' 
 
 And he took the boy's right hand, and grasped it in the plain 
 English fashion. 
 
 ' There is the hand of an honest man. Come down, men, if 
 you be wise ; and take this young lord's hand, and serve him in 
 the wars ; as I shall do.' 
 
 One by one the men came down ; and each took Arnoul's 
 hand, and shook it till the lad's face grew red. But none of 
 them bowed, or made obeisance. They looked the boy full in 
 the face, and as they stepped back, stared round upon the ring 
 of armed men with a smile and something of a swagger. 
 
 ' These are they who bow to no man, and call no man master,' 
 whispered the abbot. 
 
 And so they were : and so are their descendants of Scotland 
 and Northumbria unto this very day. 
 
 The boy sprang from his horse, and walked among them and 
 round them in delight. He admired and handled their double 
 axes ; their short sea-bows of horn and deer-sinew ; their red 
 Danish coats ; their black sea-cloaks, fastened on the shoulder 
 with rich brooches ; and the gold and silver bracelets on their 
 wrists. He wondered at their long shaggy beards, and still 
 more at the blue patterns with which the English among them, 
 Hereward especially, were tattooed on throat, and arm, and 
 knee. 
 
 'Yes, you are Vikings— just such as my uncle Robert tells 
 me of.'
 
 VI HOW HEREWARD WAS WRECKED 91 
 
 Hereward knew well the exploits of Robert le Frison in 
 Spain and Greece. 'I trust that your noble uncle,' he asked, 
 'is well? He was one of us poor sea-cocks, and sailed the 
 swan's path gallantly, till he became a mighty prince. Here 
 is a man here who was with your noble uncle in Spain.' 
 
 And he thrust forward the old master. 
 
 The boy's delight knew no bounds. He should tell him all 
 about that in St. Bertin. 
 
 Then he rode back to the ship, and round and round her (for 
 the tide by that time had left her high and dry), and wondered 
 at her long snake-like lines, and carven stem and stern. 
 
 'Tell me about this ship. Let me go on board of her. I 
 have never seen a sliip inland at Mens there ; and even here 
 there ai'e only heavy ugly busses, and little fishing-boats. No. 
 You must be all hungry and tired. We will go to St. Bertin at 
 once, and you shall be feasted royally. Hearken, villains ! ' 
 shouted he to the peasants. ' This ship belongs to the fair sir 
 here — my guest and friend ; and if any man dares to steal from 
 her a stave or a nail I will have his thief's hand cut off.' 
 
 ' The ship, fair lord,' said Hereward, ' is yours, not mine. You 
 should build twenty more after her pattern, and man them with 
 such lads as these, and then go down to 
 
 ' " Miklagard and Spanialand, 
 That lie so far on the lee, ! " 
 
 as did your noble uncle before you.' 
 
 And so they marched inland, after the boy had dismounted 
 one of his men, and put Hereward on the horse. 
 
 ' You gentlemen of the sea can ride as well as sail,' said the 
 chatelain, as lie remarked with some surprise Hereward's per- 
 fect seat and hand. 
 
 'We should soon learn to fly likewise,' laughed Hereward, 'if 
 there were any booty to be picked up in the clouds there over- 
 head ; ' and he rode on by Arnoul's side, as the lad questioned 
 liim about the sea, and nothing else. 
 
 ' Ah, my fair boy,' said Hereward at last, ' look there, and let 
 those be Vikings who must.' 
 
 And he pointed to the rich pastures, broken by strips of 
 cornland and snug farms, which stretched between the sea and 
 the great forest of Flanders. 
 
 ' What do you mean ? ' 
 
 But Hereward was silent. It Avas so like his own native 
 fens. For a moment there came over him the longing for a 
 home. To settle down in such a fair fat land, and call good 
 acres his own, and marrv, and beget stalwart sons, to till the 
 old estate when he could till no moi-e. Might not that be a 
 better life — at least a hajipier one — than restless, homeless, aim- 
 less adventure 1 And now — just as he had had a hope of peace 
 — a hope of seeing his own land, his own folk, perhaps of making
 
 92 HEREWARD THE AVAKE chap. 
 
 peace with his mother and his king ; the very waves would not 
 let him rest, but sjied him forth, a storm-tossed waif, to begin 
 life anew, fighting he cared not whom or why, in a strange 
 land. 
 
 So he was silent and sad withal. 
 
 ' What does he mean 1 ' asked the boy of the abbot. 
 
 ' He seems a wise man : let him answer for himself.' 
 
 The boy asked once more. 
 
 'Lad ! lad !' said Hereward, waking as from a dream. 'If 
 you be heir to such a fair land as that, thank God there ; and 
 pray to Him that you may rule it justly, and keep it in peace, 
 as they say your grandfather and your father do : and leave 
 glory, and fame, and the Vikings' bloody trade, to those who 
 have neither father nor mother, wife nor land, but live like the 
 wolf of the wood, from one meal to the next.' 
 
 ' I thank you for those words, Sieur Heraud,' said the good 
 abbot, while the boy went on abashed, and Hereward himself 
 was startled at his own saying, and rode silent till they crossed 
 the drawbridge of St. Bertin, and entered that ancient fortress, 
 so strong that it was the hiding-place in war time for all the 
 treasures of the country, and so sacred withal that no woman, 
 dead or alive, was allowed to defile it by her presence ; so that 
 the wife of Baldwin the Bold, ancestor of Arnoul, Avishing to be 
 buried by the side of her husband, had to remove his corpse 
 from St. Bertin to the abbey of Blandigny, where the Counts 
 of Flanders lay in glory for many a generation. 
 
 The pirates entered, not without gloomy distrust, the gates 
 of that consecrated fortress ; while the monks in their turn 
 were (and with some reason) considerably frightened when they 
 were asked to entertain as guests forty Norse rovers. _ Loudly 
 did the elder among them bewail (in Latin, lest their guests 
 should understand too much) the present weakness of their 
 monastery, where St. Bertin and St. Omer were left to defend 
 themselves and their monks against the' wicked world outside. 
 Far different had been their case some hundred and seventy 
 years before. Then St. Valeri and St. Itiquier of Pontliieu, 
 transported thither from tlieir own resting-places in France for 
 fear of the invading Northmen, had joined their suffi-ages and 
 merits to those of St. Bertin and his whilome servants, with 
 such success that the abbey had never been defiled by the foot 
 of the heathen. But alas ! the .saints (that is, their bodies) after 
 awhile became home-sick ; and St. Valeri, ai:)pearing in a dream 
 to Hugh Capet, bade him bring them back to France in spite of 
 Arnulf, count of those parts, who wished much to retain so 
 valuable an addition to his household gods. 
 
 But in vain. Hugh Capet was a man who took few denials. 
 With knights and men-at-arms he came, and Count Arnulf had 
 to send home the holy corpses with all humility, and leave St. 
 Bertin and St. Omer to themselves.
 
 VI HOW HEREWARD WAS WRECKED 93 
 
 \Miereon St. Valeri appeared in a dream to Hugh Capet, and 
 said unto him, ' Because thou hast zealously done what I com- 
 manded, thou and thy successors shall reign in the kingdom of 
 France to everlasting generations.' ^ 
 
 However, there was no refusing the grandson and heir of 
 Count Baldwin ; and the hearts of the monks were comforted 
 by hearing that Here ward was a good Christian, and that most 
 of his crew had been at least baptized. The abbot therefore 
 took courage, and admitted them into the hospice, with solemn 
 warnings as to the doom which they might expect if they took 
 the value of a horse-nail from the patrimony of the blessed 
 saint. Was he less powerful or less careful of his own honour 
 than St. Lieven of Holthem, who, not more than fifty years 
 before, had struck stone-blind four soldiers of the Emperor 
 Henry's, who had dared, after warning, to plunder the altar?'- 
 Let them remember, too, tlie fate of their own forefathers, tlie 
 heathens of the North, and the check which, one hundred and 
 seventy years before, they had received under those very walls. 
 They had exterminated the people of Walcheren ; they had 
 taken prisoner Count Regnier ; they had burnt Ghent, Bruges, 
 and St. Omer itself, close by ; they had left nought between the 
 Scheldt and the Somme save stark corpses and blackened ruins. 
 What could withstand them till they dared to lift audacious 
 hands against the heavenly lord who sleeps there in Sithiu ? 
 Then they poured down in vain over the Heilig-Veld, innumer- 
 able as the locusts. Poor monks, strong in the protection of the 
 holy Bertin, sallied out and smote them hip and thigh, singing 
 their psalms the while. The ditches of the fortress were tilled 
 with unbaptized corpses ; the piles of vine-twigs which they 
 lighted to burn down the gates, turned their flames into the 
 Norsemen's faces at the bidding of St. Bertin ; and they fled 
 from that temporal fire to descend into that which is eternal, 
 while the gates of the pit were too narrow for the multitude of 
 their miscreant souls. ^ 
 
 So the Norsemen heard, and feared ; and only cast longing 
 eyes at the gold and tapesti'ies of the altars, when they went 
 in to mass. 
 
 For the good abbot, gaining courage still further, had pointed 
 out to Hereward and his men that it had been surely by the 
 merits and suft'rages of the blessed St. Bertin that they had 
 escaped a watery grave. 
 
 Hereward and his men, for their part, were not inclined to 
 deny the theory. That they had miraculously escaped, from 
 the accident of the tide being high, they knew full well ; and 
 that St. Bertin should have done tliem the service was probable 
 
 1 Ristoirc des Comtcs de Flandrc, par E. le Glay. E gestis SS. 
 Ricliarii et Waleiici. 
 
 ^ Ibid. ^ This gallant feat was performed in a.d. 891.
 
 94 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 enough. He, of course, was lord and master in his own country, 
 and very j^robably a few miles out to sea likewise. 
 
 So Hereward assured tlie abbot that lie liad no mind to eat 
 St. Bertin's bread, or accept his favours, without paying honestly 
 for them ; and after mass he took from his shoulders a hand- 
 some silk cloak (the only one he had), with a great Scotch 
 Cairngorm brooch, and bade them buckle it on the shoulders 
 of tlie great image of St. Bertin. 
 
 At which St. Bertin was so pleased (being, like many saints, 
 male and female, somewhat proud after their death of the 
 finery which they despised during life), that he appeared that 
 night to a certain monk, and told him tliat if Hereward would 
 continue duly to honour him, tlie blessed St. Bertin, and his 
 monks of that place, he would, in his turn, ensure him victory 
 in all his battles by land and sea. 
 
 After which Hereward stayed quietly in the abbey certain 
 days ; and young Arnoul, in spite of all remonstrances from 
 the abbot, would never leave his side till he had heard from 
 him and from his men as much of their adventures as they 
 thought it prudent to relate. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 HOW HEREWARD WENT TO THE WAR AT GUISNES 
 
 The dominion of Baldwin of Lille — Baldwin the Debonair — 
 Marquis of Flanders, and just then the greatest potentate in 
 Europe after the Kaiser of Germany and the Kaiser of Con- 
 stantinople, extended from the Somme to the Scheldt, including 
 thus much territory which now belongs to France. His fore- 
 fathers had ruled there ever since the days of the ' Foresters ' of 
 Charlemagne, who held the vast forests against the heathens of 
 the fens ; and of that famous Baldwin Bras-de-fer, who, when 
 the foul fiend rose out of the Scheldt, and tried to drag him 
 down, tried cold steel upon him (being a practical man), and 
 made his ghostly adversary feel so sorely the weight of the 
 ' iron arm,' that he retired into his native mud — or even lower 
 still. 
 
 He, like a daring knight as he was, ran oft' with his (so some 
 say) early love, Judith, daughter of Charles the Bald of France, a 
 descendant of Charlemagne himself. Married up to Ethelwulf 
 of England, and thus steiDmother of Alfred the Great — after her 
 husband's death behaving, alas for her ! not over wisely or well, 
 she had verified the saying, 
 
 ' Nous revenons toujours 
 A nos premiers amours,' 
 
 and ran away with Baldwin.
 
 VII AT THE WAR AT GUISNES 95 
 
 Chai'les, very wroth that one of his earls, a mere lieutenant 
 and creature, should dare to marry a daughter of Charlemagne's 
 house, would have attacked him with horse and foot, tire and 
 sword, had not Baldwin been the only man who could defend 
 his northern frontier against the heathen Norsemen. 
 
 The pope, as Charles was his good friend, fulminated against 
 Baldwin the excommunication destined for him who stole a 
 widow for his wife, and all his accomplices. 
 
 Baldwin and Judith went straight to Rome, and told their 
 story to the poj^e. 
 
 He, honest man, wrote to Charles the Bald a letter which 
 still remains, — alike merciful, sentimental, and politic, with its 
 usual ingrained element of what we now call (from the old 
 monkish word ' cantare ') cant. Of Baldwin's horrible wicked- 
 ness there is no doubt. Of his rej^entance (in all matters short 
 of amendment of life, by giving up the fair Judith), still less. 
 But the jDope has ' another motive for so acting. He fears lest 
 Baldwin, under the weight of Charles's wrath and indignation, 
 should make alliance with the Normans, enemies of God and the 
 lioly Church ; and thus an occasion arise of peril and scandal 
 for the people of God, whom Cliarles ought to rule,' etc. etc., 
 which if it happened, it would be worse for them and for 
 Charles's own soul. 
 
 To whicli very sensible and humane missive (times and creeds 
 being considered), Charles answered, after pouting and sulking, 
 by making Baldwin bond fide king of all between Somme and 
 Scheldt, and leaving him in peace with Judith, the wicked and 
 the fair. 
 
 This all happened about a.d. 863. Two hundred years after, 
 there ruled over that same land Baldwin the Debonair, as 
 ' Marquis of the Flamands.' 
 
 Baldwin had had his troubles. He had fought the Count of 
 Holland. He had fought the Emperor of Germany ; during 
 which war he had burnt the cathedral of Nimeguen ; and did 
 other unrighteous and unwise things ; and had been beaten 
 after all. 
 
 Baldwin had had his troubles, and had deserved them. But 
 he had had his glories, and had deserved them likewise. He had 
 cut the Fosse Neuf, or new dyke, which parted Artois from 
 Flanders. He had so beautitied the cathedral of Lille, that he 
 was called Baldwin of Lille to his dying day. He had married 
 Adela, the queen countess, daughter of the King of France. He 
 had become tutor of I'hilip, the young king, and more or less 
 thereby regent of the north of France, and had fulfilled his 
 office wisely and well. He liad married liis eldest son, Baldwin 
 the Good, to the terrible sorceress Bichilda, heiress of Hainhault, 
 wherefore the bridegroom Avas named l>aldwin of j\lons. He 
 had married one of his daughters, Matilda, to William of 
 Normandy, afterwards the Conqueror ; and another, Judith, to
 
 96 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 Tosti Godwinsson, the son of the great Earl Godwin of England. 
 She afterwards married Welf, Duke of Bavaria : whereby, it 
 may be, the blood of Baldwin of Flanders runs in the veins of 
 Queen Victoria. 
 
 And thus there were few potentates of the north more 
 feared and respected than Baldwin, the good-natured Earl of 
 Flanders. 
 
 But one sore thorn in the side lie had, which other despots 
 after him shared with him, and had even worse success in 
 extracting ;— namely, the valiant men of Scaldmariland, which 
 we now call Holland. Of them hereafter. At the moment of 
 Hereward's arrival he was troubled with a lesser thorn, the 
 Count of Guisnes (seemingly that INIanasses whom Richard of 
 Ely confounds with the chatelain, or other lawful commander, 
 of St. Oraer), who would not pay him up certain dues, and 
 otherwise acknowledge his sovereignty. 
 
 Therefore when the chatelain of St. Omer sent him word to 
 Bruges that a strange Viking had landed with his crew, calling 
 liimself Harold Naemansson, and offering to take service with 
 him, he returned for answer that the said Harold might make 
 proof of his faith and prowess upon the said count, in which, if 
 he acquitted himself like a good knight, Baldwin would have 
 further dealings with him. 
 
 So the chatelain of St. Omer, with all his knights and men- 
 at-arms, and Hereward with his sea-cocks, marched north-west 
 up to Guisnes, with little Arnoul cantering alongside in high 
 glee, for it was the first war he had ever seen. 
 
 And they came to the castle of Guisnes, and summoned the 
 count, by trumpet and herald, to pay or fight. 
 
 "Whereon, the count preferring the latter, certain knights of 
 his came forth and challenged tlie knights of St. Omer to fight 
 them man to man. Whereon tliere was the usual splintering of 
 lances and slipping up of horses, and hewing at heads and 
 shoulders so well defended in mail that no one was much hurt. 
 The archers and arbalisters, meanwhile, amused themselves by 
 shooting at the castle walls, out of which they chipped several 
 small pieces of stone. And when they were all tired they drew 
 off on both sides, and went in to dinner. 
 
 At which Hereward's men, who were accustomed to a more 
 serious fashion of fighting, stood by, mightily amused, and 
 vowing it was as pretty a play as ever they saw in their lives. 
 
 The next day the same comedy was repeated. 
 
 'Let me go in against those knights, sir chatelain,' asked 
 Hereward, who felt tlie lust of battle tingling in him from head 
 to heel ; 'and try if I cannot do .somewliat towards deciding all 
 this. If we figlit no faster than we did yesterday our beards 
 will be grown down to our knees before we take Guisnes.' 
 
 ' Let my Viking go ! ' cried Arnoul. ' Let me see him fight ! ' 
 as if he had been a pet game-cock or bull-dog.
 
 VII AT THE AVAR AT GUISNES 97 
 
 'You can break a lance, fine sir, if it please you,' said the 
 chatelain. 
 
 ' I break more than lances,' quoth Hereward, as he cantered 
 off. 
 
 'You,' said he to his men, 'draw round hither to the left ; 
 and when I drive the Frenchmen to the right, make a run for 
 it, and get between them and the castle gate ; and we will try 
 the Danish axe against tlieir horses' legs.' 
 
 Then Hereward spurred his horse, shouting ' A Wake ! A 
 Wake ! ' and dashed into the press ; and therein did mightily, 
 like any Turpin or Roland, till he saw lie on the ground, close 
 to the castle gate, one of the chatelain's knights with four 
 Guisnes knights around him. At them he rode, and slew them 
 every one ; and mounted the wounded Fleming on his own 
 horse and led him across the field, though the archers shot sore 
 at him from the wall. And wlien the press rode at him, his 
 Danish men got between them and the castle, and made a stand 
 to cover liim. Then the Guisnes knights rode at them scorn- 
 fully, crying— 
 
 'What footpad-churls have we here, wlio fancy they can face 
 horsed knights 1 ' 
 
 But they did not know the stuff" of tlie Danish men ; who all 
 shouted 'A Wake! A Wake!' and turned the lances' points 
 with their targets, and hewed off" the horses' heads, and would 
 have hewed off" the riders' likewise, had not Hereward bidden 
 them give quarter, according to the civilised fashion of France 
 and Flanders. Whereon all the knights who were not taken 
 rode right and left, and let them pass through in peace, with 
 several prisoners, and him whom Hereward had rescued. 
 
 At which little Arnoul was as proud as if he had done it 
 liimself ; and the chatelain sent word to Baldwin that the new- 
 comer was a prudhomme of no common merit ; while the lieart 
 of the Count of Guisnes became as water ; and his knights, both 
 those who were captives and those who were not, complained 
 indignantly of the unchivah'ous trick of the Danes. How 
 villainous for men on foot, not only to face knights, but to 
 bring them down to their own standing ground by basely 
 cutting off" their horses' heads ! 
 
 To which Hereward answered, that he knew the rules of 
 chivalry as well as any of them : but he was hired, not to joust 
 at a tournament, but to make the Count of Guisnes pay his lord 
 Baldwin, and make him pay he would. 
 
 The next day lie bade liis men sit still and look on, and leave 
 him to himself. And when the usual 'monomachy' began, he 
 singled out the burliest and boldest knight whom he saw, rode up 
 to him lance point in air, and courteously asked him to come and 
 be killed in fair fight. The knight being, says the chronicler, 
 'magnificent in valour of soul and council of war, and held to 
 be as a lion in fortitude throughout the army,' and seeing that 
 11 H. T. w.
 
 98 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 Hei-eward was by no means a large or a heavy man, replied as 
 courteously, that he should have great pleasure in trying to kill 
 Hereward. On which they rode some hundred yards out of the 
 press, calling out that they were to be left alone by both sides, 
 for it was an honourable duel; and, turning their horses, 
 charged. 
 
 After which act they found themselves and then- horses all 
 four in a row, sitting ' on their hind-quarters on the ground, 
 amid the fragments of their lances. 
 
 ' Well ridden ! ' sliouted they both at once, as they leaped up 
 laugliing, and drew their swords. 
 
 After which they hammered away at each other merrily in 
 the devil's .smithy. The sparks flew ; the iron rang ; and all 
 men stood still to see that gallant fight. 
 
 So they watclied and cheered, till Hereward struck his man 
 such a blow under the ear, that he dropped, and lay like a log. 
 
 ' I think I can carry you,' quoth Hereward, and picking him 
 up, he threw him over his shoulder, and walked towards his 
 men. 
 
 ' Bear and bullock ! ' shouted they in delight, laughnig at the 
 likeness between Hereward's attitude and that of a bear wad- 
 dhng off on his hind legs with his prey in his arms. 
 
 'He should have killed his bullock outright before he went 
 to carry him. Look there ! ' 
 
 And the knight, awakening from his swoon, struggled 
 violently (says the cln^onicler) to escape. 
 
 But Hereward, though the smaller, was the stronger man ; 
 and crushing him in his arms, walked on steadily. 
 
 ' Kniglits'to the rescue ! Hoibricht is taken ! ' shouted they 
 of Guisnes, galloping towards him. 
 
 ' A AVake ! a Wake ! To me Vikings all ! ' shouted Hereward. 
 And the Danes leapt up, and ran towards him, axe in hand. 
 
 The chatelain's knights rode up likewise ; and so it befell 
 that Hereward carried liis prisoner safe into camp. 
 
 'And wlio are you, gallant knight ?' asked he of his prisoner. 
 
 ' Hoibricht, nephew of Eustace, Count of Guisnes.' 
 
 ' So I suppose you will be ransomed. Till then Armourer ! ' 
 
 And the hapless Hoibricht found himself chained and fettered, 
 and sent off to Hereward's tent, under the custody of Martm 
 Liglitfoot. . 
 
 ' Tlie next day,' says the chronicler, ' the Count of Guisnes, 
 stupefied witli grief at the loss of his nephew, sent the due 
 honour and service to his prince, besides gifts and hostages.' 
 
 And so ended the troubles of Baldwin and Eustace of 
 Guisnes.
 
 VIII THE ART TO WIN HEREWARD S LOVE 99 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 how a fair lady exercised the mechanical art to win 
 
 hereward's love 
 
 In an upper room of lier mother's house in St. Omer sat the 
 fair Torfrida, alternately looking out of the window and at a 
 book of mechanics. In the garden outside, the wryneck (as it 
 is his fashion in May) was calling Pi-ioi-pi among the gooseberry 
 bushes, till the cob- walls rang again. In the book was a Latin 
 recipe for drying the poor wryneck, and using him as a philtre 
 which should compel the love of any person desired. ]\Iechanics, 
 it must be understood, in those days were considered as identi- 
 cal with mathematics, and those again with astrology and 
 magic ; so that the old chronicler, who says that Torfrida was 
 skilled in the ' mechanic art,' uses the word in the same sense 
 as does the author of the History of Ramsey^ who tells us how a 
 certain holy bishop of St. Dunstan's party, riding down to Corfe 
 through the forest, saw the wicked queen-mother Elfrida (her 
 who had St. Edward stabbed at Corfe Gate) exercising her 
 ' mechanic art ' under a great tree ; in plain English, perform- 
 ing heathen incantations ; and how, when she saw that slie was 
 discovered, she tempted him to deadly sin ; but when she found 
 him proof against allurement, she had him into her bower ; and 
 there the enchantress and her ladies slew him by thrusting 
 red-hot bodkins under his arms, so that the blessed man was 
 martyred without any sign of wound. Of all which let every 
 man believe as much as he list. 
 
 Torfrida had had peculiar opportunities of learning mechanics. 
 Tlie fairest and richest damsel in St. Omer, she had been left early 
 by her father an orphan, to the care of a superstitious mother, 
 and of a learned uncle, the Abbot of St. Bertin. Her mother 
 was a Provengale, one of those Arlesiennes whose dark Greek 
 beauty still shines, like diamonds set in jet, in the doorways of 
 the quaint old city. Gay enough in her youtli, she had, like a 
 true southern woman, taken to superstition in her old age ; and 
 spent her days in the churches, leaving her daughter to do and 
 learn what she would. Torfrida's nurse, moreover, was a Lapp 
 woman, carried off in some jiirating foray, and skilled in all tlie 
 sorceries for which the Lapps were famed throughout the North. 
 Her uncle, partly from good-nature, partly from a pious liope 
 that she might enter religion, and leave her wealth to the 
 Church, had made her his pupil, and taught her the mysteries 
 of books ; and slie had proved to be a strangely apt scholar. 
 Grammar, rhetoric, Latin prose and poetry, such as were tauglit 
 in those days, she mastered ere she was gi'own up. Then she 
 fell upon romance ; and Charlemagne and his Paladins, the 
 heroes of Troy, Alexander and his generals, peopled her imagin-
 
 100 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 atioii. She had heard, too, of the great necromancer Virgilius 
 (for into such the middle age transformed the poet), and, her 
 fancy ah^eady excited by her Lapp nurse's occult science, she 
 began eagerly to court forbidden lore. 
 
 Forbidden, indeed, was the magic by the Church ; but as a 
 reality, not as an imposture. Those whose consciences were 
 tough and their faith weak, had little scruj^le in applying to a 
 witch, and asking help from the powers below, when the saints 
 above were slack to hear them. Churchmen, even, were bold 
 enough to learn the mysteries of nature, algebra, judicial as- 
 trology, and the occult powers of herbs, stones, and animals, 
 from the Mussulman doctors of Cordova and Seville ; and, like 
 Pope Gerbert, mingle science and magic, in a fashion excusable 
 enough in days when true inductive science did not exist. 
 
 Nature had her miraculous powers — how far good, how far 
 evil, who could tell ? The belief that God was the sole maker 
 and ruler of the universe was confused and darkened by the 
 cross -belief tliat the material world had fallen under the 
 dominion of Satan and his demons ; that millions of spirits, 
 good and e\dl in every degree, exercised continually powers 
 over crops and cattle, mines and wells, storms and lightning, 
 health and disease. Riches, honours, and royalties, too, were 
 under the command of the jjowers of darkness. For that gener- 
 ation, which was but too apt to take its Bible in hand upside 
 down, had somehow a firm faith in the word of the devil, and 
 believed devoutly his somewhat startling assertion, that the 
 kingdoms of tlie world were his, and the glory of them ; for to 
 him they were delivered, and to whomsoever he would he gave 
 them : while it had a proportionally weak faith in our Lord's 
 answer, that they were to worship and serve the Lord God 
 alone. How far these powers extended, how far they might be 
 counteracted, how far lawfully employed, were questions which 
 exercised the minds of men, and produced a voluminous litera- 
 ture for several centuries, till the search died out, for very weari- 
 ness of failure, at the end of the seventeenth century. 
 
 The Abbot of St. Bertin, therefore, did not hesitate to keep 
 in his private libi^ary more than one volume which he would not 
 have willingly lent to the simple monks under his charge ; nor 
 to Torf rida either, had she not acquired so comi^lete a command 
 over the good old man, that he could deny her nothing. 
 
 So she read of Gerbert, Pope Silvester II, who had died only 
 a generation back ; how (to quote William of Malmesbury) 'he 
 learned at Seville till he surj^assed Ptolemy with the astrolabe, 
 Alcandrus in astronomy, and Julius Firmicus in judicial 
 astrology ; how he learned what the singing and flight of birds 
 portended, and acquired tlie art of calling up spirits from hell ; 
 and, in short, whatever — hurtful or healthful — human curiosity 
 had discovered, besides the lawful sciences of arithmetic and 
 astronomy, music and geometry ; ' how he acquired from the
 
 VIII THE ART TO WIN HEREWARD'S LOYE 101 
 
 Saracens the abacus (a counting table) ; how he escaped from the 
 Moslem magician, his tutor, by making a compact with the foul 
 fiend, and putting himself beyond the power of magic, by hang- 
 ing himself under a wooden bridge, so as to touch neither earth 
 nor water ; how he taught Robert King of France, and Kaiser 
 Otto III, surnamed ' The wonder of the world ' ; how he made an 
 hydraulic organ which played tunes by steam, standing even 
 then in the cathedral of Rheims ; how he discovered in the 
 Campus Martius at Rome wondrous treasures, and a golden 
 king and queen, golden courtiers and guards, all lighted by a 
 single carbuncle, and guarded by a boy with a bent bow, who, 
 when Gerbert's servant stole a golden knife, shot an arrow at 
 that carbuncle ; and all was darkness, and yells of demons. 
 
 All this Torfrida had read ; and read, too, how Gerbert's 
 brazen head had told him that he should be pope, and not die 
 till he had sung mass at Jerusalem ; and how both had come 
 true — the latter in mockery ; for he was stricken with deadly 
 sickness in Rome, as he sang mass at the church called Jeru- 
 salem, and died horribly, tearing himself in pieces. 
 
 Which terrible warning had as little eftect on Torfrida as 
 other terrible warnings have on young folk, who are minded to 
 eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 
 
 So Torfrida beguiled her lonely life in that dull town, look- 
 ing out over dreary flats and muddy dykes, by a whole dream- 
 world of fantastic imaginations, and was ripe and ready for any 
 wild deed which her wild brain might suggest. 
 
 Pure she was all the while, generous, and noble -heai-ted ; 
 with a deep and sincere longing — as one soul in ten thousand 
 has — after knowledge for its own sake ; but ambitious exceed- 
 ingly, and that not of monastic sanctity. She laughed to scorn 
 the notion of a nunnery, and laughed to scorn equally the 
 notion of marrying any knight, however much of a prudhomme, 
 whom she had yet seen. Her uncle and Marquis Baldwin could 
 have between tliem compelled her, as an orphan heiress, to marry 
 whom they liked. But Torfrida had as yet managed both the 
 abbot and the marquis successfully. Lances had been splintered, 
 helmets split, and more than one life lost in her honour ; but 
 she had only, as the best safeguard she could devise, given some 
 hint of encouragement to one Ascelin, a tall knight of St. Valeri, 
 the most renowned and courtly bully of tliose parts, by bestow- 
 ing on him a scrap of ribbon, and bidding him keep it against all 
 comei's. By this means she insured the personal chastisement 
 of all other youths who dared to lift their eyes to her, wliile she 
 by no means Ijound herself to her spadassin of St. Valeri. The 
 method was rough ; but so was the time, and what better could 
 a poor lady do in days wlien no man's life, or woman's honour, 
 was safe, unless (as too many were forced to do) she retired into 
 a cloister, and got from the Church that peace which this world 
 certainly could not give, and, happily, dared not take away?
 
 102 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 The arrival of Hereward and liis men had, of course, stirred 
 the great current of her life, and, indeed, that of St. Omer, 
 usually as stagnant as the dykes round its wall. Who the un- 
 known champion Avas (for his name of Naemans-son showed 
 that he was concealing something at least) — whence he had 
 come, and what had been his previous exploits, busied all the 
 gossips of the town. Would he and his men rise and plunder 
 the abbey? Was not the chatelain mad in leaving young 
 Arnoul with him all day ? Madder still, in taking him out to 
 battle against the Count of Guisnes ? He might be a spy, the 
 avant-courier of some great invading force. He was come to 
 spy out the nakedness of the land, and would shortly vanish, to 
 return with Harold Hardraade of Norway, or Sweyn of Den- 
 rnai-k, and all their hosts. Nay, was he not Harold Hardraade 
 himself in disguise 1 And so forth. All wliich Torf rida heard, 
 and thought within herself that, be he who he might, she should 
 like to look on him again. 
 
 Then came the news how, the very first day that he had 
 gone out against tlie Count of Guisnes, he had gallantly rescued 
 a wounded man. A day or two after came fresh news of some 
 doughty deed ; and then another and another. And when 
 Hereward returned, after a week's victorious fighting, all St. 
 Omer was in the street to stare at him 
 
 Then Torfrida heard enough, and, had it been possible, more 
 than enough, of Hereward and his prowess. 
 
 And wlien they came riding in, the great marquis at the head 
 of them all, with Robert le Frison on one side of him, and on 
 the other Hereward, as fresh as flowers in I\Iay, Torfrida looked 
 down on him out of her little lattice in the gable, and loved 
 him, once and for all, with all her heart and soul. 
 
 And Hereward looked up at her and her dark blue eyes and 
 dark raven locks ; and thought her the fairest thing that he had 
 ever seen, and asked who she might be, and heard ; and as he 
 heard, he forgot all about tlie Sultan's daughter, and the pi'incess 
 of Constantinople, and the fairy of Brocheliaunde, and all the 
 other pretty birds wJiich were still in the bush about the wide 
 world : and thought for many a day of nought but the pretty 
 bird which he held (so conceited was he of his own i^owers of 
 winning her) there safe in hand in St. Omer. 
 
 So he cast about to see her, and to win her love. And she 
 cast about to see him, and to win his love. But neither saw 
 the otlier for awhile ; and it might have been better for one of 
 them had tliey never seen each other again. 
 
 If Torfrida could have foreseen, and foreseen, and fore- 
 seen : why, if she were true woman, she would have done 
 
 exactly what she did, and taken the bitter with the sweet, tlie 
 unknown witli the known, as we all must do in life, unless we 
 wish to live and die alone.
 
 IX AT THE WAR IN SCALDMARILAND 103 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 HOW HEEEWARD WENT TO THE WAR IN SCALDMARILAND 
 
 It has been shown how the Count of Guisnes had been a 
 thorn in the side of Baldwin of Lille, and how that thorn was 
 drawn out by Hereward. But far sharper thorns in his side, 
 which had troubled many a count before, and were destined to 
 trouble others afterwards, were those unruly Zeelanders, or 
 Frisians, who dwelt in Scaldmariland, ' the land of the meres 
 of the Scheldt.' Beyond the vast forests of Flanders, in 
 morasses and alluvial islands whose names it is impossible 
 now to verify, so much has the land changed, both by inunda- 
 tions and by embankments, by the brute forces of nature and 
 the noble triumi^hs of art, dwelt a folk, poor and savage ; 
 living mostly, as in Caesar's time, in huts raised above the 
 sea, on j^iles or mounds of earth ; often without cattle or seed- 
 held ; half savage, half heathen : but free. Free, with the 
 divine instinct of freedom, and all the self - help and energy 
 which spring thereout. 
 
 They were a mongrel race ; and, as most mongrel races are 
 (when sprung from parents not too far apart in blood), a strong 
 race ; the remnant of those old Frisians and Batavians, who 
 had defied, and all but successfully resisted, the power of Rome ; 
 mingled with fresh crosses of Teutonic blood from Frank, 
 Sueve, Saxon, and tlie otlier German tribes, who, after the fall 
 of the Roman Emjiire, had swept across the land. 
 
 Tlieir able modern historian has well likened their first 
 struggle — that between Civilis and the Romans, to their last 
 — that between William the Silent and tlie Spaniard. It was, 
 without doubt, tlie foreshadow of their whole history. They 
 were distinguished, above most Eui^opean races, for sturdy in- 
 dependence, and for what generally accompanies it — sturdy 
 common sense. They could not understand why they should 
 obey foreign Frank rulers, whetlier set over them by Dagobert 
 or by Cliarlemagne. They could not understand why they 
 were to pay tithes to foreign Frank priests, who had forced on 
 them, at the sword's point, a religion Avhich they only half 
 believed and only half understood. Many a true holy man 
 preached to them to the best of his powers : l)ut the cross 
 of St. Boniface had too often to follow the sword of Charles 
 Martel ; and for every Frisian who was converted another was 
 killed. 
 
 ' Free Frisians,' nevertheless, they remained, at least in 
 name and in their statute book, 'as long as the wind blows out 
 of the clouds and the world stands.' The feudal system never
 
 104 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 took root in their soil.^ If a Frank count was to govern them, 
 lie must govern according to their own laws. Again and again 
 they rebelled, even against that seemingly light rule. Again 
 and again they brought down on themselves the wrath of their 
 nominal sovereigns, the counts of Flanders ; then of the kaisers 
 of Germany ; and, in the thirteenth century, of the Inquisition 
 itself. Then a crusade was preached against them as 'Stad- 
 ings,' heretics who paid no tithes, ill-used monks and nuns, and 
 worshipped (or were said to worship) a black cat and the foul 
 fiend among the meres and fens. Conrad of Marpurg, the 
 brutal Director of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, burnt them at his 
 wicked will, extirpating, it may be, hei'esy, but not the spirit of 
 the race. That spirit, crushed down and seemingly enslaved 
 during the middle age, under Count Dirk and his descendants, 
 still lived : destined at last to conquer. They were a people 
 who had determined to see for themselves and act for themselves 
 in the universe in which they found themselves ; and, moreover 
 (a necessary corollary of such a resolution), to fight to the death 
 against any one who interfered with them in so doing. 
 
 Again and again, therefore, the indomitable spirit rose, 
 founding free towns with charters and guilds ; embanking the 
 streams ; draining the meres ; fighting each other and the 
 neighbouring princes ; till, in their last great struggle against 
 the pope and Spain, they rose once and for all, 
 
 ' Heated hot with burning fears, 
 And bathed in baths of hissing tears, 
 And battered with the strokes of doom 
 To shape and use,' 
 
 as the great Protestant Dutch Piepublic. 
 
 A noble errand it had been for such a man as Hereward to 
 help those men toward freedom, instead of helping Frank 
 counts to enslave them ; — men of his own blood, with laws 
 and customs like those of his own Anglo-Danes, living in a 
 land so exactly like his own that every mere and fen and wood 
 reminded him of the scenes of his boyhood. The very names 
 of the two lands were alike — ' Holland,' the hollow land — the 
 one of England, the other of Flanders. 
 
 But all this was hidden from Hereward. To do as he would 
 be done by was a lesson which he had never been taught. If 
 men had invaded his land, he would have cried, like the Frisians 
 whom he was going to enslave, ' I am free as long as the wind 
 l)lows out of the clouds ! ' and died where he stood. But that 
 was not tlie least reason why he should not invade any other 
 man's land, and try whether or not he, too, would die where he 
 stood. To him these Frieslanders were simply savages, probably 
 heathens, who would not obey their lawful lord, a gentleman 
 
 ^ Motley, Pdsc of tlie Dutch Hepuhlic.
 
 IX AT THE WAR IN SCALDMARILAND 105 
 
 and a Christian ; besides, renown, and possibly a little plunder, 
 might be got by beating them into obedience. He knew not 
 what he did ; and knew not, likewise, that as he had done to 
 others, so would it be done to him. 
 
 Baldwin had at that time made over his troublesome Hol- 
 landers to his younger son Eobert, the Viking Avhom little 
 Arnoul longed to imitate. 
 
 Florent, Count of Holland, and vassal of the great marquis, 
 had just died, leaving a pretty young widow, to whom the Hol- 
 landers had no mind to pay one stiver more than they were 
 forced. All the isles of Zeeland, and the counties of Eonham 
 and Alost, were doing that which was right in the sight of their 
 own eyes, and finding themselves none the worse therefor ; 
 though the Countess Gertrude, doubtless, could buy fewer silks 
 of Greece or gems of Italy. But to such a distressed lady a 
 champion could not long be wanting. Robert had been driven 
 out of Spain by the ]\Ioors with fearful loss, and, in a second 
 attempt, wrecked witli all his fleet as soon as he got out of 
 port. He then, it would seem, started in palmer's guise, nomi- 
 nally for Jerusalem, but really for Byzant. For, according to 
 Lambert of Aschaftenbourg, certain Norman Vikings had 
 offered to make him Kaiser of Greece, and more than rival of 
 Robert Guiscard in his new Italian kingdom. But tlie existing 
 Greek kaiser, hearing of the plot, commanded him to be slain 
 as soon as he set foot on shore. To avoid which end the disap- 
 pointed palmer wended homeward once more, and resolved to 
 cliange thenceforth the salt water for the fresh, and leave 
 the swan's -path for that of the humble ducks and geese of 
 Holland. 
 
 So he rushed to avenge the wrongs of the Countess Gertrude ; 
 and liis father, whose good sense foresaw that the fiery Robert 
 would raise storms upon his path — happily for his old age he 
 did not foresee the worst — let him go, with his blessing. 
 
 Then Robert gathered to him valiant ruffians, as many as he 
 could find ; and when he heard of the Viking who had brought 
 Eustace of Guisnes to reason, it seemed to him that he was a 
 man who would do his work. And when the great marquis 
 came down to St. Omer to receive the homage of Count Eustace 
 of Guisnes, Robert came thither too, and saw Hereward. 
 
 ' You have done us good service, Harold Naemansson, as it 
 pleases you to be called,' said Baldwin, smiling. 'But some 
 man's son you are, if ever I saw a gallant knight, earl-born by 
 his looks as well as his deeds.' 
 
 Hereward Ijowed. 
 
 ' And for me,' said Robert, ' Naemansson or earl's son, here 
 is my Viking's welcome to all Vikings like myself.' And he 
 held out his hand. 
 
 Hereward took it. 
 
 ' You failed in Galicia, beausire, only because your foes were
 
 106 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 a hundred to one. You will not fail where you ai'e going, if 
 (as I hear) they ai-e but ten to one.' 
 
 Eobert laughed, vain and gratified. 
 
 'Then you know where I have been, and where I am 
 going ? ' 
 
 ' Why not 1 A.s you know well, we Vikings are all brothers ; 
 and all know each other's counsel, from ship to ship, and port 
 to port.' 
 
 Then the two young men looked each other in the face, and 
 each saw that the other was a man who would suit liim. 
 
 ' Skall to the Viking ! ' cried Eobert, aping, as was his fancy, 
 the Norse rovers' slang. ' Will you come with me to Holland ? ' 
 
 'You must ask my young lord there,' and he pointed to 
 Arnoul. ' I am his man now, by all laws of honour.' 
 
 A flush of jealousy passed over Robert's face. He, haplessly 
 for himself, thought that he had a grievance. 
 
 The rights of jirimogeniture—' droits d'ainesse' — were not re- 
 spected in the family of the Baldwins as they should have been, 
 had prudence and common sense had their way. 
 
 No sacred or divine right was held to be conferred by the 
 fact of a man's being the first-born son. As among the Jews of 
 old, the ' Lord's anointed ' was usually rather a younger son of 
 talent and virtue ; one born, not according to the flesh, but 
 according to the spirit, like David and Solomon. And so it was 
 in other realms besides Flanders during the middle age. The 
 father handed on the work — for ruling was hard work in those 
 days— to the son most able to do it. Therefore we can believe 
 Lambert of Aschaffenbourg when he says that iia Count Bald- 
 win's family for many ages the son wlio pleased his father most 
 took his father's name, and was hereditary prince of all 
 Flanders ; while the other brothers led an inglorious life of 
 vassalage to him. 
 
 But we can conceive, likewise, that such a method would give 
 rise to intrigues, envyings, calumnies, murders, fratricidal civil 
 wars, and all the train of miseries which for some years after 
 this history made infamous the house of Baldwin ; as they did 
 many another royal house, till they were stopped by the 
 gradual adoption of the rational rule of primogeniture. 
 
 So Ptobert, who might have been a daring and useful friend 
 to his brother, had he been forced to take for granted from 
 birth that he was nothing, and his brother all in all —as do all 
 younger sons of English noblemen, to their infinite benefit — held 
 himself to be an injured man for life, because his father called 
 his first-born Baldwin, and promised him the succession— which 
 indeed he had worthily deserved, according to the laws of 
 Mammon and this world, by bringing into the family such an 
 heiress as Richilda, and such a dowry as Mons. 
 
 But Piobert, wlio thought himself as good as his brother 
 (tliough he was not such, save in valour), nursed black envy
 
 IX AT THE WAR IIST SCALDM ARIL AND 107 
 
 in his heart. Hard it was to him to hear his elder brother 
 called Baldwin of Mons, when he himself had not a foot of land 
 of his own. Hai'der still to hear him called Baldwin the Good, 
 when he felt in himself no title whatsoever to that epithet. 
 Hardest of all to see a beautiful boy grow up as heir both of 
 Flanders and of Hainault. 
 
 Had he foreseen whither that envy would liave led him ; had 
 he foreseen the hideous and fratricidal day of February 22, 
 1071, and that fair boy's golden locks rolling in dust and blood 
 — the wild Viking would have crushed the growing snake 
 within his bosom ; for he was a knight and a gentleman. But it 
 was hidden from his eyes. He had to ' dree his weird ' ; to com- 
 mit great sins, do great deeds, and die in his bed, mighty and 
 honoured, having children to his heart's desire, and leaving the 
 rest of his substance to his babes. Heaven help him and the 
 like of him ! 
 
 He turned to young Arnoul — 
 
 ' Give me your man, boy ! ' 
 
 Arnoul pouted. He wanted to keep his Viking for himself, 
 and said so. 
 
 ' He is to teach me to go leding, as the Norsemen call it, like 
 you.' 
 
 Robert laughed. A hint at his piratical attempts pleased his 
 vanity, all the more because they had been signal failures. 
 
 'Lend him me, then, my pretty nephew, for a month or two, 
 till he has conquered these Zeeland frogs for me ; and tlien, if 
 you will go leding with him ' 
 
 ' I hope you may never come back,' thought Robert to him- 
 self ; but he did not say it. 
 
 ' Let the knight go,' quoth Baldwin. 
 
 'Let me go with him, then.' 
 
 ' No, by all saints ! ' quoth the marquis, ' I cannot have you 
 poked through with a Zeeland pike, or rotted with a Zeeland 
 ague.' 
 
 Arnoul pouted still. 
 
 'Abbot, wliat hast thou been at with the boy? He thinks of 
 nought but blood and wounds, instead of books and prayers. 
 He is gone mad after this — this knight.' 
 
 'The abbot,' said Hereward, 'knows by hearing of his ears, 
 tliat I bid liim bide at home, and try to govern lands in peace, 
 like liis father and you, lord marquis.' 
 
 'Eh?' 
 
 Tlie abbot told honestly what had passed between Hereward 
 and the lad, as tlicy rode to St. Bertin. 
 
 Baldwin was silent, thinking, and smiling jollily, as was the 
 wont of the Debonair. 
 
 ' You are a man of sense, beausire. Come with me,' said he 
 at last. 
 
 And Baldwin, Hereward and Robert went into an inner room.
 
 108 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' Sit down on the settle by me.' 
 
 ' It is too great an honour.' 
 
 ' Nonsense, man ! If I be who I am, I know enough of men 
 to know that I need not be ashamed of having you as bench- 
 fellow. Sit down.' 
 
 Hereward obeyed, of course. 
 
 ' Tell me who you are.' 
 
 Hereward looked out of the corners of his eyes, smiling and 
 perplexed. 
 
 ' Tell me and Robert who you are, man ; and be done with it. 
 I believe I know already. I have asked far and wide of chap- 
 men, and merchants, and wandering knights, and pirate 
 rascals — like yourself.' 
 
 ' And you found that I was a pirate rascal 1 ' 
 
 ' I found a pirate rascal who met you in Ireland, three years 
 since, and will swear that if you have one gray eye and one 
 blue ' 
 
 ' As he has,' quoth Robert. 
 
 ' That I am a wolf's head, and a robber of priests, and an 
 Esau on the face of the earth ; every man's hand against me 
 and mine— for I never take but Avhat I give— against every 
 man.' 
 
 ' That you are the son of my old friend Leofric of Chester ; 
 and the hottest -hearted, shrewdest -headed, hardest -handed 
 Berserker in tlie Nortli Seas. You killed Gilbert of Ghent's 
 bear, Siward Digre's cousin. Don't deny it.' 
 
 ' Don't hang me, or send me to the Westminster miracle- 
 worker to be hanged, and I will confess.' 
 
 ' 1 1 Every man is welcome who comes hither with a bold 
 hand and a strong heart. " The Refuge of Outlaws " they call 
 Flanders ; I suppose because I am too good-natured to turn 
 rogues out. So do no harm to mine, and mine shall do no harm 
 to you.' 
 
 Baldwin's words were true.^ He found houseroom for every- 
 body, helped everybody against everybody else (as will be seen), 
 and yet quarrelled with nobody— at least in his old age— by the 
 mere virtue of good-nature. 
 
 So Hereward went off" to exterminate the wicked Hollanders, 
 and revenge the wrongs of the Countess Gertrude. 
 
 1 Eltgiva Emma, between Ethelred's ruin and her marriage with 
 Canute ; Sweyn Godwinsson when outlawed by Edward the Confessor, and 
 after them, as will be seen, every one who, however fallen, seemed strong 
 enough to rise again some day, took refuge one after another with Baldwin. 
 See, for the history of him and his times, IL Kcrvyn de Lettenhoven.
 
 X HOW HEREWARD WON THE MAGIC ARMOUR 109 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 HOW HEREWARD WON THE MAGIC ARMOUR 
 
 ToRFRlDA had special opportunities of hearing about Herewai'd ; 
 for young Arnoul was to her a pet and almost a foster-brother, 
 and gladly escaped from the convent to tell lier the news. 
 
 He had now had his first taste of the royal game of war. He 
 had seen Hereward figlit by day, and heard him tell stories over 
 the camp fire by night. Hereward's beauty, Hereward's 
 prowess, Hereward's songs, Hereward's strange adventures 
 and wanderings, were for ever in the young boy's mouth ; 
 and he spent hours in helping Torfrida to guess who the great 
 unknown might be ; and then went back to Hereward, and 
 artlessly told him of his beautiful friend, and how they had 
 talked of him, and of nothing else ; and in a week or two Here- 
 ward knew all about Torfrida ; and Torfrida knew — what filled 
 her heart with joy — that Hereward was bound to no lady-love, 
 and owned (so he had told Arnoul) no mistress save the sword 
 on liis thigh. 
 
 Whereby there had grown up in the hearts of both of them a 
 mutual interest, which easily became the parent of love. 
 
 When Baldwin the great marquis came to St. Omer, to re- 
 ceive the homage of Eustace of Guisnes, young Arnoul ran into 
 Torfrida's chamber in great anxiety. Would his grandfather 
 approve of what he had done ? Would he allow his new friend- 
 shi}) with the unknown 1 
 
 ' What care 1 1 ' said Torfrida. ' But if your friend wishes to 
 Jiave the marquis's favour, he would be wise to trust him, at 
 least so far as to tell his name.' 
 
 _ 'I have told him so. I have told him that you would tell 
 him so.' 
 
 ' 1 1 Have you been talking to him about me ? ' 
 
 'Why not?' 
 
 'That is not well done, Arnoul, to talk of ladies to men whom 
 they do not know.' 
 
 Arnoul looked uji, puzzled and pained ; for she spoke 
 hauglitily. 
 
 ' I know naught of your new friend. He may be a low-born 
 man, for anything that I can tell.' 
 
 ' He is not ! He is as noble as I am. Everything he says and 
 does — every look — shows liis birth.' 
 
 ' You are young — as you have shown by talking of me to him. 
 But I have given you my advice ; ' and she moved listlessly 
 away. 'Let him tell your grandfather wlio he is, or remain 
 suspected.' 
 
 The boy went away sadly.
 
 110 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 Early the next morning he burst into Torfrida's room as she 
 was dressing her hair. 
 
 ' How now 1 Are these manners for the heir of Flanders ? ' 
 
 ' He has told all ! ' 
 
 ' He has ! ' and she started and dropt her comb. 
 
 ' Pick up that comb, girl. You need not go away. I have no 
 secrets with young gentlemen.' 
 
 ' I thought you would be glad to hear,' said Arnoul. 
 
 ' 1 1 What can I want in the matter, save that your grand- 
 father should be satisfied that you are entertaining a man 
 worthy to be your guest ? ' 
 
 'And he is worthy : he has told my grandfather who he is.' 
 
 ' But not you 1 ' 
 
 ' No. They say I must not know yet. But this I know, that 
 they welcomed him, when he told them, as if he had been an 
 earl's son ; and that ho is going with my uncle Robert against 
 the Zeelanders.' 
 
 ' And if he be an earl's son, how comes he here, wandering 
 with rough seamen, and hiding his honest name 1 He must 
 have done something of which he is ashamed.' 
 
 'I shall tell you nothing more.' 
 
 ' What care I ? I can find out by art magic if I like.' 
 
 ' I don't believe all that. Can you find out, for instance, what 
 he has on his throat ? ' 
 
 ' A beard.' 
 
 ' But what is under that beard ? 
 
 ' A goitre.' 
 
 ' You are laughing at me.' 
 
 'I shall laugh at any one who challenges me to find out any- 
 thing so silly, and so unfit.' 
 
 ' I shall go.' 
 
 ' Go then.' For she knew very well that lie would come back 
 again. 
 
 'Nurse,' said Torfrida to the old Lapp woman, when they 
 were alone, 'find out for me what is the name of this strange 
 champion, and what he has beneath his beard.' 
 
 ' Beneath his beard 1 ' 
 
 ' Some scar, I supi)ose, or secret mark. I must know. You 
 will find out for your Torfrida, will you not, nurse?' 
 
 ' I will make a charm that will bring him to you, were all the 
 icebergs of Quenland between you and him ; and then you can 
 see for yourself.' 
 
 ' No, no, no ! not yet, nurse ! ' and Torfrida smiled. ' Only 
 find me out that one thing : that I must know.' 
 
 And yet why she wanted to know, she could not tell herself. 
 
 The old woman came back to her ere she went to bed. 
 
 'I have found it out, all and more. I know where to get 
 scarlet toadstools; and I put the juice in his men's ale ; they 
 are laughing and roaring now, merry-mad every one of them.'
 
 X HOW HEREWARD WON THE MAGIC ARMOUR 111 
 
 ' But not he r _ _ 
 
 'No, no. He is with the marquis. But in madness comes 
 out truth ; and that long hook-nosed body-varlet of his has told 
 us all.' 
 
 And she told Torfrida who Hereward was, and the secret 
 mark. 
 
 ' There is a cross upon his throat, beneath his chin, pricked 
 in after their English fashion.' 
 
 Torfrida started. 
 
 ' Then— then the spell will not work upon him ; the Holy 
 Cross will tui-n it off.' 
 
 'It must be a great cross and a holy one that will turn off 
 my charms,' said the old hag, with a sneer, ' wiiatever it may 
 do against yours. But on the back of his hand — that will be a 
 mark to know him by — there is pricked a bear — a white bear 
 that he slew.' And she told the story of the fairy beast, which 
 Torfrida duly stored up in her heart. 
 
 ' So he has the cross on his throat,' thought Torfrida to her- 
 self. ' Well, if it keep off my charm, it will keep oti' others — 
 that is one comfort ; and one knows not what fairies, or witches, 
 or evil creatures, he may meet with in the forests and the 
 fens.' 
 
 The discovery of Hereward's rank did not, doubtless, lessen 
 Torfrida's fancy for him. 81ie was ambitious enougli, and proud 
 enough of her own lineage, to be full glad that her heart had 
 strayed away — as it must needs stray somewhere — to the son of 
 the third greatest man in England. As for his being an outlaw, 
 that mattered little. He might be inlawed, and rich and power- 
 ful, any day in those uncertain topsy-turvy times ; and for the 
 present, his being a wolf's head only made him the more inter- 
 esting to her. Women like to pity their lovers. Sometimes — 
 may all good beings reward them for it — they love merely 
 because they pity. And Torfrida found it pleasant to pity the 
 insolent young coxcomb, who certainly never dreamed of jjitying 
 himself. 
 
 When Hereward went home that niglit, he found the abbey 
 of St. Bertin in horrible confusion. His men were groujied out- 
 side the gate, chattering like monkeys ; the porter and the 
 monks from inside entreating them vainly to come in and go to 
 bed (|uietly. 
 
 But they would not. They vowed and swoi'e that a great 
 gulf had opened all down the road, and that one step more would 
 tumble them in headlong. They manifested the most aflection- 
 ate solicitude for the monks, warning them, on their lives, not 
 to step across the threshold, or they would be swallowed (as 
 i\Iartiii, wlio was the maddest of the lot, j)hrased it) with Korah, 
 Datlian, and Abiram. In vain Hereward stormed ; assured them 
 that the supposed abyss was nothing but tlie gutter ; proved 
 the fact by kicking" Martin over it. The men determined to
 
 112 IIEREWARD THE AVAKE cuai'. 
 
 believe their own eyes, and after awhile fell asleep in heaps in 
 the roadside, and lay tliere till morning, when they woke, de- 
 claring, as did the monks, that they had been all bewitched. 
 They knew not — and hapj^ily the lower orders both in England 
 and on the Continent do not yet know — the potent virtues of 
 that strange fungus, with which Lapps and Samoiedes have, it 
 is said, practised wonders for centuries past. 
 
 The worst of tlie matter was, that Martin Lightfoot, who had 
 drunk most of the poison, and had always been dreamy and 
 uncanny, in spite of his shrewdness and humour, had from that 
 day forward something very like a bee in his bonnet. 
 
 But before Count Robert and Hereward could collect suffi- 
 cient troops for the invasion of Holland, another chance of being 
 slain in fight arose, too tempting to be overlooked, namely, the 
 annual tournaments at Pons and Poitiers,^ where all the noblest 
 knights of France would assemble, to win their honour and 
 ladies' love by hewing at each other's sinful bodies. Thither, 
 too, over three hundred and fifty miles of bad road, the best 
 knights of Flanders must needs go ; and with them Hereward. 
 Though no knight, he was allowed in Flanders, as he had been 
 in Scotland, to take his place among that honourable company. 
 For thougli lie still refused the honour of knighthood, on the 
 ground that he had as yet done no deed deserving thereof, he 
 was held to have deserved it again and again, and all the more 
 from his modesty in declining it. 
 
 So away they all went to Poitiers, a right gallant meinie ; 
 while Torfrida watched them go from the lattice window. 
 
 And when they had passed down the street, tramping and 
 gingling and caracoling, young Arnoul ran into the house with 
 eyes full of tears, because he was not allowed to go likewise ; 
 and with a message for Torfrida from no other than Hereward. 
 
 ' I was to tell you this and no more : that if he meets your 
 favour in the field, he that wears it will have hard work to keep 
 it.' 
 
 Torfrida turned pale as ashes ; first with wild delight, and 
 then with wild fear. 
 
 ' Ha — does he know who — Sir Ascelin 1 ' 
 
 'He knows well enough. Why not? Every one knows. Are 
 you afraid that he is not a match for that great ox ? ' 
 
 ' Afraid ? Who said I was afraid ? Sir Ascelin is no ox either ; 
 but a courteous and gallant knight.' 
 
 ' You are as pale as death ; and Sir ' 
 
 'Never mind what I am,' said she, putting her hands over 
 the boy's eyes, and kissing him again and again, as a vent for 
 her joy. 
 
 The next few days seemed years for length ; but she could 
 wait. She was sure of him now. She needed no charms. ' Per- 
 
 ^ ' Apud Pontes et Pictaviam.' — Pons in Xaintonge.
 
 X HOAV HEREAVARD WOI^ THE MAGIC ARMOUR 113 
 
 liaps,' thouglit she, as she looked in the glass, ' I was my own 
 charm.' And indeed she had a fair right to say so. 
 
 At last news came. 
 
 Torfrida was sitting over her books ; her mother, as usual, 
 was praying in the churches ; when the old Lapp nurse came in. 
 A knight was at tlie door. He said his name was Siward the 
 White, and he came from Hereward. 
 
 From Hereward ! He was at least alive ; he might be 
 wounded, though ; and she rushed out of the chamber into the 
 hall, looking more beautiful than ever ; her colour heightened 
 by the quick beating of her heart ; her dark hair, worn loose 
 and long, after the fashion of those days, streaming around her 
 and beliind her. 
 
 A handsome young man stood in the doorway, armed from 
 head to foot. 
 
 'You are Siward, Hereward's nephew?' 
 
 He bowed assent. She took liim by the hands, and, after the 
 fashion of those days, kissed him on the small space on either 
 cheek wliich was left bare between the nose-piece and the chain- 
 mail. 
 
 ' You are welcome. Hereward is — alive ? ' 
 
 ' Alive and gay, and all the more gay at being able to send to 
 the Lady Torfrida by me something which was once hers, and 
 now is liers once more.' 
 
 And he drew from his bosom the ribbon of the knight of St. 
 Valeri. 
 
 She almost snatched it from his hand, in her delight at re- 
 covering her favour. 
 
 ' How — where — did he get this ? ' 
 
 ' He saw it, in the thick of the tournament, on the helm of a 
 Icnight who, he knew, had vowed to maim liim or take his life ; 
 and, wishing to give him a chance of f ultilling his vow, rode him 
 down, horse and man. The knight's French friends attacked us 
 in force, and we Flemings, with Hereward at our head, beat 
 them off , and overthrew so many, that we are almost all liorsed 
 at the Frenchmen's expense. Three more knights, with tlieir 
 horses, fell before Hereward's lance.' 
 
 ' And what of this favour ? ' 
 
 ' He sends it to its owner. Let her say what shall be done 
 with it.' 
 
 Torfrida was on the point of saying, 'He lias won it, let him 
 wear it for my sake.' But slie paused. Slie longed to see Here- 
 ward face to face ; to speak to him, if but one word. If she 
 allowed him to wear the favour, she must at least have the 
 l^leasui'e of giving it with her own hands. And she jDaused. 
 
 'And he is killed?' 
 
 'Who? Hereward?' 
 
 ' Sir Ascelin.' 
 
 'Only bruised ; but lie shall l)e killed, if you will.' 
 
 I ]I. T. w.
 
 114 HEREWABD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 'God forbid!' 
 
 ' Then,' said the knight, mist.aking her meaning, ' all I have 
 to tell Hereward is, it seems, that he has wasted his blow. He 
 will return, therefore, to the knight of St. Valeri his horse, and, 
 if the Lady Torf rida chooses, the favour which he has taken by- 
 mistake from its rightful owner.' And he set his teeth, and 
 could not prevent stamping on the ground, in evident passion. 
 There was a tone, too, of deep disappointment in his voice, 
 which made Torfrida look keenly at him. Why should Here- 
 wai-d's nepliew feel so deeply about that favour ? And as she 
 looked— could that man be the youtli Siward 1 Young he was, 
 but surely thirty years old at least. His face could hardly be 
 seen, hidden byhelmet and nose-piece above, and mailed up to 
 the mouth below. But his long moustache was that of a grown 
 man ; his vast breadth of shoulder, his hard hand, his sturdy 
 limbs— these surely belonged not to the slim youth whom she 
 had seen from her lattice riding at Hereward's side. And as she 
 looked, she saw upon his hand the bear of which her nurse had 
 told her. 
 
 'You are deceiving me ! ' and she turned hrst deadly pale, and 
 then crimson. ' You— you are Hereward himself ! ' 
 
 ' 1 1 Pardon me, my lady. Ten minutes ago I should have 
 been glad enough to liave been Hereward. Now I am tliankful 
 enougli that I am only Siward ; and not Hereward, who wins 
 for himself contempt by overthrowing a knight more fortunate 
 than he.' And he bowed, and turned away to go. 
 
 ' Hereward ! Hereward ! ' and in her passion she seized him 
 by both his hands. ' I know you ! I know that device upon 
 your hand. At last ! at last ! My hero, my Paladin ! How I 
 have longed for this moment ! How I have toiled for it, and not 
 in vain! Alas, alas !— what am I saying?' And she tried, in 
 her turn, to escape from Hereward's mailed arms. 
 ' Then you do not care for that man ? ' 
 
 'For him? Here, take my favour, wear it before all the 
 world, and guard it as you only can ; and let all know that 
 Torfrida is your love.' 
 
 And with hands trembling with passion she bound the ribbon 
 round his helm. 
 
 ' Yes ! I am Hereward,' he almost shouted ; ' the Berserker, 
 the brain-hewer, the land-thief, the sea-tliief, the feeder of wolf 
 and raven— Aoi ! Ere my beard was grown, I was a match for 
 giants. How much more now tliat I am a man whom ladies 
 love 1 Many a champion has quailed before my very glance. 
 How much more now that I wear Torfrida's gift ? Aoi ! ' 
 
 Torfrida has often heard that wild battle-cry of Aoi! of 
 which the early minstrels were so fond— with whicli the great 
 poet who wrote tlie Song of Roland ends every paragraph ; 
 which has now fallen (displaced by our modern Hurrali) to be 
 merely a sailor's call or hunter's cry. But she shuddered as she
 
 X HOAV HEREWARD AVOX THE MAGIC ARMOUR 115 
 
 lieard it close to her ears ; and saw, from the flasliing eye and 
 dilated nostril, the temper of the man on whom she had thrown 
 herself so utterly. She laid her hand upon his lips. 
 
 'Silence ! silence for pity's sake. Remember that you are in 
 a maiden's liouse ; and tliink of her good fame.' 
 
 Hereward collected liimself instantly, and then, holding her 
 at arm's length, gazed upon her. ' I was mad a moment. But 
 is it not enough to make me mad to look at you 1 ' 
 
 ' Do not look at me so, I cannot bear it,' said she, hanging- 
 down her head. ' You forget that I am a poor weak girl.' 
 
 'Ah! we are rough wooers, we sea-rovers. We cannot pay 
 glozing French compliments like your knights here, who fawn 
 on a damsel with soft words in the hall, and will kiss the dust 
 off their queen's feet, and die for a hair of their goddess' 
 eyebrow ; and then if they find her alone in the forest, show 
 themselves as very ruffians as if they were Paynim Moors\ We 
 are rougli, lady, we English : but those who trust us find us 
 true.' 
 
 ' And I can trust you ? ' she asked, still trembling. 
 
 'On God's cross there round your neck,' and he took her 
 crucifix and kissed it. 'You only I love, you only I will love, 
 and you will I love in all honesty, before the angels of heaven, 
 till we be wedded man and wife. Who but a fool would soil the 
 flower which he means to wear before all the world 1 ' 
 
 'I knew Hereward was noble! I knew I liad not trusted 
 liim in vain ! ' 
 
 'I kept faith and honour with the princess of Cornwall, 
 when I had her at my will, and shall I not keep faith and 
 honour with you 1 ' 
 
 ' The princess of Cornwall 1 ' asked Torf rida. 
 
 'Do not be jealous, fair queen. I brought her safe to her 
 betrothed ; and wedded she is, long ago. I will tell you that 
 story some day. And now — I must go.' 
 
 ' Not yet ! not yet ! I have something to — to show you.' 
 
 She motioned him to go up the narrow stairs, or rather 
 ladder, which led to the upper floor, and then led him into her 
 chamber. 
 
 A lady's chamber was then, in days when privacy was little 
 cared for, her usual reception-room ; and the bed, which stood 
 in an alcove, served as a common seat for her and her guests. 
 But Torfrida did not ask him to sit down. Slie led the way 
 onward towards a door beyond. 
 
 Hereward followed, glancing with awe at the books, parch- 
 ments, and strange instruments whicli lay on the table and the 
 flooi". 
 
 The old Lapp nurse sat in tlie window, sewing busily. She 
 looked up, and smiled meaningly. But as she saw Torfrida 
 unlock the fartlier door with one of the keys which hung at her 
 girdle, she croaked out :
 
 116 HEREWARD THE WAKE . chap. 
 
 ' Too fast ! Too fast ! Trust lightly, and repent heavily.' 
 
 ' Trust at once, or trust never,' said Torf rida, as she oj^ened 
 the door. 
 
 Hereward saw within rich dresses hung on perches round 
 the wall, and chests barred and padlocked. 
 
 'These are treasures,' said she, 'which many a knight and 
 nobleman has coveted. By cunning, by flattery, by threats of 
 force even, have they tried to win what lies here — and Torf rida 
 Iierself, too, for tlie sake of her wealth. But thanks to the 
 abbot, my uncle, Torfrida is still her own mistress, and mistress 
 of the wealth which her forefathers won by sea and land far 
 away in the East. All here is mine— and if you be but true to 
 me, all mine is yours. Lift the lid for me, it is too heavy for 
 my arms.' 
 
 Hereward did so ; and saw within golden cups and bracelets, 
 hoi'ns of ivory and silver, bags of coin, and among them a mail 
 shirt and helmet, on which he fixed at once silent and greedy 
 eyes. 
 
 She looked at his face askance, and smiled. ' Yes, these are 
 more to Hereward's taste than gold and jewels. And he shall 
 have them. He shall have them as a proof that if Torfrida has 
 set her love upon a worthy knight, she is at least worthy of 
 him ; and does not demand without being able to give in return.' 
 
 And she took out the armour and held it up to him. 
 
 ' This is the work of dwarfs or enchanters ! This was not 
 forged by mortal man ! It must have come out of some old 
 cavern, or dragon's hoard ! ' said Hereward, in astonishment at 
 the extreme delicacy and slightness of the mail-rings, and the 
 richness of the gold and silver with which both hauberk and 
 helm were inlaid. 
 
 ' Enchanted it is, they say ; but its maker, who can tell ? 
 My ancestor won it, and by the side of Charles Martel. Listen, 
 and I will tell you how. 
 
 ' You have heard of fair Provence, where I spent my youth ; 
 the land of the sunny south ; the land of the fig and the olive, 
 the mulberry and the rose, the tulip and the anemone, and all 
 rich fruits and fair flowers, — the land where every city is piled 
 with temples, and theatres, and towers as high as heaven, which 
 the old Romans built with their enchantments, and tormented 
 the blessed martyrs therein.' 
 
 ' Sun in heaven ! How beautiful you are ! ' cried Hereward, 
 as her voice shaped itself into a song, and her eyes flashed, at 
 the remembrance of her southern home. 
 
 Torfrida was not altogether angry at finding that he was 
 thinking of her, and not of her words. 
 
 'Peace, and listen. You know how the Paynim held that 
 land — the Saracens, to Avhom Mahound taught all tlie wisdom 
 of Solomon — as tliey teach us in turn,' she added in a lower 
 voice.
 
 X HOW HEREWARD WON THE MAGIC ARMOUR 117 
 
 'And how Cliarles and his Paladins' [Charles ]\Iartel and 
 Charlemagne were perpetually confounded in the legends of 
 the time] 'drove them out, and conquered the country again 
 for God and His Mother.' 
 
 'I have heard ' but he did not take his eyes off her face. 
 
 'They were in the amphitheatre at Aries, the Saracens, 
 where the blessed martyr St. Trophimus had died in torments ; 
 they had set up their idol of Mahound, and turned the place 
 into a fortress. Charles burned it over their heads : you see — 
 I have seen — the blackened walls, the bloodstained marbles, to 
 this day. Then they fled into the plain, and there they turned 
 and fought. Under Montmajour, by the hermit's cell, they 
 fought a summer's day, till they were all slain.^ There was an 
 Emir among them, black as a raven, clad in magic armour. All 
 lances turned from it, all swords shivered on it. He rode 
 through the press without a wound, while every stroke of his 
 scimitar shore off a head of horse or man. Charles himself rode 
 at him, and smote him with his hammer. They heard the blow 
 in Avignon, full thirty miles away. The flame flashed out from 
 the magic armour a fathom's length, blinding all around ; and 
 wlien they recovered their sight, the enchanter was far away in 
 the battle, killing as he went. 
 
 'Then Charles cried, "Who will stop that devil, whom no 
 steel can wound 1 Help us, O blessed martyr St. Trophimus, 
 and save the soldiers of the cross from shame ! " 
 
 ' Then cried Torf rid my forefather — " What use in crying to 
 St. Trophimus ? He could not help himself when the Paynim 
 burnt him : and how can he lielp us ? A tough arm is worth a 
 score of martyrs here." 
 
 ' And he rode at that Emir, and gript him in his arms. They 
 both fell, and rolled together on the ground : but Toi-frid never 
 loosed his hold till he had crushed out his unbaptized soul, and 
 sent it to join Mahound in hell. 
 
 'Then he took his armour, and brought it home in triumph. 
 But after awhile he fell sick of a fever ; and the blessed St. 
 
 1 I have followed the old legends, as Torfrida would have heard them ; 
 and they are not altogether to be disbelieved. The Churcli of the Holy 
 Cross, perhaps the most beautiful Romanesque .building in Europe, is said 
 to date not from the year 739, but from 1019 and from Pons de Marignan, 
 Bishop of Aries. But the rock graves round — some of them very old, 
 tliough not those of ' primitive Christians ' — indicate a religio loci, which 
 must have been the cause, not the consequence, of the church. Probably 
 an older building had existed on the site. And certainly, if the monks 
 of Montmajour liad invented both legend and place, they would have 
 rather cliosen for the latter St. Trophimus' cave in the hill above, which 
 is surely, deducting the Romanesque additions, one of the earliest of 
 Cliristian monuments. Moreover, the very name Montmajour, the 
 ' Mayor's Blount,' points to Charles Martel as the Iiero of the isolated hill 
 forming so strong a military position iu the wide plain.
 
 118 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 Tropliimus appeared to ]iim, and told him that it was a punish- 
 ment for his blasphemy in the battle. So he repented, and 
 yowed to serve the saint all his life. On which he was healed 
 instantly, and fell to religion, and went back to Montmajour : 
 and there he was a hermit in the cave under the rock, and 
 tended the graves hewn in the living stone, where his old 
 comrades, the Paladins who were slain, sleep side by side round 
 the Church of tlie Holy Cross. But the armour he left here ; 
 and he laid a curse upon it, that whosoever of his descendants 
 should lose tliat armour in fight, should die childless, without a 
 son to wield a sword. And therefore it is that none of my 
 ancestors, valiant as they have been, have dared to put this 
 harness on tiieir backs.' 
 
 And so ended a story, which Torfrida believed utterly, and 
 Hereward likewise. 
 
 'And now, Hereward mine, dare you wear that magic 
 armour, and face old Torfrid s curse ? ' 
 
 ' What dare I not T 
 
 ' Think. If you lose it, in you your race must end.' 
 
 ' Let it end. I accept the curse.' 
 
 And he put the armour on. 
 
 But lie trembled as he did it. Atheism and superstition go 
 too often hand -in- hand ; and godless as he was, sceptical of 
 Providence itself, and much more of the help of saint or angel, 
 still the curse of the old warrior, like the malice of a witch or a 
 demon, was to him a thing possible, probable, and formidable. 
 
 Torfrida looked at him in pride and exultation. 
 
 'It is yours — the invulnerable harness! Wear it in the 
 forefront of the battle ! And if weapon wound you through it, 
 may I, as punishment for my lie, suffer the same upon my 
 tender body— a wound for every wound of yours, my knight ! ' ^ 
 
 And after that they sat side by side, and talked of love with 
 all honour and honesty, never Jieeding the old hag, who crooned 
 to herself in her barbarian tongue — 
 
 ' Quick thaw, long frost, 
 Quick jo}', long jmin, 
 Soon found, soon lost, 
 You will take your gilt again.' 
 
 ' 'Volo enim in nieo tale quid nunc 2>erpeti corpore semel, quicquid 
 eas ferrei vel e metallo excederet.'
 
 XI HOW HE WAS TAKEN FOR A MAGICIAN 119 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 HOW THE HOLLANDERS TOOK HEREWARD FOR A MAGICIAN 
 
 Of this weary Holland war whicli dragged itself on, campaign 
 after campaign, for several years, what need to tell? There 
 was, doubtless, the due amount of murder, plunder, burning, 
 and worse ; and the final event was certain from the beginning. 
 It was a struggle between civilised and disciiDlined men, armed 
 to the teeth, and well furnished with ships and military engines, 
 against poor simple folk in 'coats stiffened with tar and rosin, 
 or in very short jackets of hide ' (says the chronicler), ' who fought 
 by threes, two with a hooked lance and three darts each, and 
 between them a man with a sword or an axe, who lield his 
 shield before those two ; — a very great multitude, but in com- 
 position utterly undisciplined,' who came down to the sea-coast, 
 with carts and waggons, to carry off the spoils of the Flemings, 
 and bade them all surrender at discretion, and go home again 
 after giving up Count Robert and Hereward, with the ' tribunes 
 of the brigades,' to be put to death — as valiant South Sea 
 islanders might have done : and then found themselves as 
 sheep to the slaughter before the cunning Hereward, whom 
 they esteemed a magician on account of his craft and his 
 invulnerable armour. 
 
 So at least says Richard of Ely, who tells long confused 
 stories of battles and campaigns, some of them without due 
 regard to chronology ; for it is certain that the brave Zeelanders 
 could not on Robert's first landing have ' feared lest they should 
 be conquered by foreigners, as they had heard the English were 
 by the French,' inasmuch as that event had not then happened. 
 
 And thus much of the war among the meres of Scheldt. 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 HOW HEREWARD TURNED BERSERKER 
 
 Torfrida's heart misgave her that first night as to the effects of 
 her exceeding frankness. Her pride in the first place was some- 
 what wounded ; she liad dreamed of a knight who would worship 
 her as his queen, hang on lier smile, die at her frown ; and she 
 had meant to l)ring Hereward to her feet as such a slave, in 
 boundless gratitude ; but liad he not rather held his own, and 
 brought her to his feet, by assuming her devotion as his right? 
 And if lie assumed that, how far could slie trust him not to 
 abu.se liis claim ? Was he quite as perfect, seen close, as seen 
 afar off? And now that the intoxication of that meeting had
 
 120 HEREAVARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 passed off, she began to remember more than one little fault 
 which she would have gladly seen mended. — Certain rough- 
 nesses of manner whicli contrasted unfavourably with the polisli 
 (merely external though it was) of the Flemish and Norman 
 knights ; a boastful self-sufficiency, too, which bordered on the 
 ludicrous at whiles even in lier partial eyes ; which would be a 
 matter of open laughter to the knights of the court. Besides, 
 if they laughed at him, they would laugh at her for choosing 
 him. And then wounded vanity came in to help wounded pride ; 
 and she sat over the cold embers till almost dawn of day, her 
 head between her hands, musing sadly, and half wishing that 
 the irrevocable yesterday had never come. 
 
 But when, after a few months, Hereward returned from his 
 first campaign in Holland, covered witli glory and renown, all 
 smiles, and beauty and health, and good-humour, and gratitude 
 for the magic armour which had preserved him unhui't, then 
 Torfrida forgot all her fears, and thought herself the happiest 
 maid alive for four-and-twenty hours at least. 
 
 And tlien came back, and after that again and again, the old 
 fears. Gradually she found out that the sneers which she had 
 heard at English barbarians were not altogether without ground. 
 
 Not only had her lover's life been passed among half-brutal 
 and wild adventurers ; but, like the rest of his nation, he had 
 never felt the influence of that classic civilisation without which 
 good manners seem, even to this day, almost beyond the reach 
 of the Western races. Those among Avhom she had been 
 brought up, whether soldiers or clerks, were probably no nobler 
 or purer at heart— she would gladly have believed them far less 
 so — than Hereward ; but the merest varnish of Romai:i culture 
 had given a charm to their mannei's, a wideness of range to 
 their thoughts, which Hereward had not. 
 
 Especially when he had taken too much to drink — which he 
 did, after the Danish fashion, far oftener than the I'est of 
 Robert's men — he grew rude, boastful, quarrelsome. He would 
 chant his own doughty deeds ; and gab (as the Norman word 
 was) in painful earnest, while they gabbed only in sport, and 
 outvied each other in impossible fanfarronades, simply to laugh 
 down a fashion which was held inconsistent witli tlie modesty 
 of a true knight. Bitter it was to her to hear him announce to 
 the company, not for the first or second time, how he had slain 
 the Cornish giant, whose height increased by a foot at least 
 every time he was mentioned ; and then to hear him answered 
 by some smart, smooth -shaven youth, who, with as much 
 mimicry of his manner as he dared to assume, boasted of having 
 slain in Araby a giant with two heads, and taken out of Ins two 
 moutlis tlie two halves of the princess whom he was devouring, 
 which being joined together afterwards by the prayers of a holy 
 hermit, were delivered back safe and sound to her father tlie 
 King of Antioch. And more bitter still was it to hear Hereward
 
 XII HOW HEREWARD TURNED BERSERKER 121 
 
 angrily dispute the story, unaware (at least at first) that he was 
 being laughed at. 
 
 Then she grew sometimes cold, sometimes contemptuous, 
 sometimes altogether fierce ; and shed bitter tears in secret, 
 when she was comi^limented on the modesty of her young 
 
 But Torfrida was a brave maiden ; and what was more, she 
 loved him with all her heart. Else v/hy endure bitter words for 
 his sake 1 And she set herself to teach and train the wild out- 
 law into her ideal of a very jDerfect knight. 
 
 She talked to him of modesty and humility, the root of all 
 virtues ; of chivalry and self-sacrifice ; of respect to the Aveak, 
 and mercy to the fallen ; of devotion to God, and awe of His 
 commandments. She set before him the example of ancient 
 heroes and philosophers, of saints and martyrs ; and as much 
 awed him by her learning, as by the new world of higher and 
 purer morality, which was opened for the first time to the 
 wandering Viking. 
 
 He, for his part, drank it all in. Tauglit by a woman who 
 loved him, he could listen to humiliating truths, which he would 
 have sneered at, had they come from the lips of a hermit or a 
 priest. Often he rebelled ; often he broke loose, and made her 
 angry, and himself ashamed : but the spell was on him — a far 
 surer, as well as purer spell than any love-potion of which 
 foolish Torfrida had ever dreamed — the only spell which can 
 really civilise man — that of woman's tact and woman's purity. 
 
 Nevertheless there were relapses, as was natural. The wine 
 at Robert the Prison's table was often too good ; and then Here- 
 ward's tongue was loosed, and Torfrida justly indignant. And 
 one evening there came a very serious relapse, out of which 
 arose a strange adventure. 
 
 It befell that the great marquis sent for his son to Bruges, 
 ere he set out for anotlier campaign in Holland ; and made him 
 a great feast, to which he invited Torfrida and her mother. 
 For Adela of France, the queen countess, liad lieard so mucli of 
 Torfrida's beauty, tliat she must needs have her as one of her 
 bower - maidens ; and her mother, who was an old friend of 
 Adela's, of course was highly honoured by such a promotion for 
 her daughter. 
 
 So they went to Bruges, and Hereward and liis men went 
 with them ; and they feasted, and harped, and sang ; and the 
 saying was fulfilled — 
 
 ' 'Tis merry in the liall 
 AVhon beards wag all.' 
 
 But the only beard which wagged in that hall was Hereward's ; 
 for tlie Flemings, like the Normans, prided themselves on their 
 civilised and smooth-shaven chins, and lauglied (behind his back) 
 at Hereward, who prided himself on keeping his beautiful Eng-
 
 122 IIEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 lish beard, with locks of gold which, like his long golden liair, 
 were combed and curled daily, after the fashion of the Anglo- 
 Danes. 
 
 After a while, Hereward's beard began to wag somewhat too 
 fast, as he sat by Torfrida's side. For some knight near began 
 to tell of a wonderful mare called Swallow, which was to be 
 found in one of the islands of the Scheldt, and was famous 
 through all the countiy round ; and insinuated, moreover, that 
 Hereward might as well have brought that mare home with him 
 as a trophy. 
 
 To which Hereward answered, in his boasting vein, that he 
 would bring home that mare, or aught else that he had a 
 liking to. 
 
 'You will find it not so easy. Her owner, they say, is a 
 mighty strong churl of a horse-breeder, Dirk Hammerhand by 
 name ; and as for cutting his throat, that you must not do; for 
 he has been loyal to Countess Gertrude, and sent her horses 
 whenever she needed.' 
 
 * One may pick a fair quarrel with him nevertheless.' 
 
 ' Then you must bide such a bullet as you never abode before. 
 They say his arm has seven men's strength ; and whosoever 
 visits him, he challenges to give and take a blow : but no man 
 that has taken a blow as yet, has ever needed another.' 
 
 ' Hereward will have need of his magic liead-piece, if he tries 
 that adventure,' quoth another. 
 
 'Ay,' retorted the first speaker ; 'but the helmet may stand 
 the rap well enough, and yet the bi'ains inside be the worse.' 
 
 'Not a doubt. I knew a man once, who was so strong that 
 he would shake a nut till the kernel went to powder, and yet 
 never break the shell.' 
 
 ' That is a lie ! ' quoth Hereward. And so it was, and told 
 purposely to make him expose himself. 
 
 Whereon high words followed, which Torfrida tried in vain 
 to stop. Hereward was flushed with ire and scorn. 
 
 ' Magic armour, forsooth ? ' cried he at last. ' What care I for 
 armour or for magic 1 I will wager to you ' — 'my armour,' he 
 was on the point of saying, but he checked himself in time — 
 ' any horse in my stable, that I go in my shirt to Scaldmariland, 
 and bring back that mare single-handed.' 
 
 ' Hark to the Englishman ! He has turned Berserker at last, 
 like his forefathers. You will surely start in a pair of hose as 
 well, or the ladies will be shamed ? ' 
 
 And so forth, till Torfrida was purple with shame, and wished 
 herself fathoms deep ; and Adela of France called sternly from 
 the head of the table to ask what the wrangling meant. 
 
 ' It is only the English Berserker, the Lady Torfrida's cham- 
 pion,' said some one in his most courteous tone, ' who is not yet 
 as well acquainted with the customs of knighthood as that fair 
 lady hopes to make him hereafter.'
 
 XII HOAV HEREWARD TURNED BERSERKER 123 
 
 'Torfrida's clianipion ?' asked Adela, in a tone of surprise, if 
 not scorn. 
 
 * If any knight quarrels with my Hereward, he quarrels with 
 Robert himself ! ' thundered Count Robert. ' Silence ! ' 
 
 And so the matter was hushed up. 
 
 The banquet ended ; and they walked out into the garden to 
 cool their heads, and play at games, and dance. 
 
 Torfrida avoided Hereward : but he, with the foolish per- 
 tinacity of a man who knows he has had too much wine, and 
 yet pretends to himself that he has not, would follow her, and 
 speak to her. 
 
 She turned away more than once. At last she was forced to 
 speak to him. 
 
 ' So ! You have made me a laughing-stock to these knights. 
 You have scorned at my gifts. You have said — and before 
 these men, too — that you need neither helm nor hauberk. Give 
 me them back, then, Berserker as you are, and go sleep off your 
 wine.' 
 
 ' That will I,' laughed Hereward boisterously. 
 
 'You are tipsy,' said she, 'and do not know what you say.' 
 
 * You are angry, and do not know what you say. Hearken, 
 proud lass. I will take care of one thing, and that is, that you 
 shall speak the truth.' 
 
 ' Did I not say that you were tipsy ? ' 
 
 ' Pish ! You said that I was a Berserker. And truth you 
 shall speak ; for baresark I go to-morrow to the war, and bare- 
 sark I win that mai'e or die.' 
 
 ' That will be very ht for you.' 
 
 And the two turned haughtily from each other. 
 
 Ere Torfrida went to bed that night, there was a violent 
 knocking. Angry as she was, she was yet anxious enough to 
 liurry out of her chamber, and open the door lierself. 
 
 Martin Lightfoot stood there with a large leather mail, whicli 
 he flung at her feet somewhat unceremoniously. 
 
 'There is some gear of yours,' said he, as it clanged and 
 rattled on the floor. 
 
 ' What do you mean, man 1 ' 
 
 ' Only that my master bid me say that he cares as little for 
 liis own life as you do.' And he turned away. 
 
 She caught him l^y the arm — 
 
 'What is the meaning of this? What is in tliis mail V 
 
 'You should know best. If young folks cannot be content 
 when they are well off", tliey will go farther and fare worse,' 
 says Martin Lightfoot. And he slipt from her grasp and fled 
 into the niglit. 
 
 She took the mail to her room and opened it. It contained 
 the magic armour. 
 
 All her anger was melted away. She cried ; she blamed her- 
 self. He would be killed ; liis blood would be on her head.
 
 124 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 She would liave carried it back to him with lier own hands ; 
 she would have entreated him on her knees to take it back. 
 But how face the courtiers ? and how find him ? Very probably, 
 too, he was by that time hopelessly drunk. And at that thoua:ht 
 she drew herself into herself, tried to harden her heart again, 
 and went to bed, but not to sleep. Bitterly she cried as she 
 thought over the old hag's croon — 
 
 ' Quick joy, long pain, 
 You will take your gift again. ' 
 
 It might have been five o'clock the next morning when the 
 clarion rang down the street. She sprang up and drest herself 
 quickly ; but never more carefully or gaily. She heard the 
 tramp of horse-hoofs. He was moving a-tield early, indeed. 
 Should she go to the window to bid him farewell ? Should she 
 hide herself in just anger ? 
 
 She looked out stealthily through the blind of the little 
 window in the gable. There rode down the street Robert le 
 Frison infull armour, and behind him, knight after knight, a 
 wall of shining steel. But by his side rode one bare-headed, his 
 long yellow curls fioating over his shoulders. His boots had 
 golden spurs, a gilt belt held up his sword ; but his only dress 
 was a silk shirt and silk hose. _ He laughed and sang, and made 
 his horse caracol, and tossed his lance in the air, and caught it 
 by the point, like Taillefer at Hastings, as lie passed under the 
 window. 
 
 She threw open the blind, careless of all appearances. She 
 would have called to him : but the words choked her ; and 
 Avhat should she say ? 
 
 He looked up boldly, and smiled. 
 
 'Farewell, fair lady mine. Drunk I was last night, but not 
 so drunk as to forget a promise.' 
 
 And he rode on, while Torf rida rushed away and broke into 
 wild weeping. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 HOW HEREWAKD WON MARE SWALLOW 
 
 On a bench at the door of his highroofed wooden house sat Dirk 
 Hammerhand, the richest man in Walcheren. From within the 
 house sounded the pleasant noise of slave- women, grinding and 
 chatting at the handquern ; from without, the pleasant noise of 
 geese and fowls without number. And as he sat and drank his 
 ale, and watched the herd of horses in the fen, he thought him- 
 self a happy man, and thanked his Odin and Thor that, owing 
 to his princely supplies of horses to Countess Gertrude, Robert 
 the Frison and his Christian Franks had not yet harried him to 
 the bare walls, as they would probably do ere all was over.
 
 XIII HOW HEREWARD WON IMARE SWALLOW 125 
 
 As he looked at the horses, some half mile off, he saw a 
 strange stir amon^- them. They began whinnying and pawing 
 round a fourfooted tiling in the midst, which might be a badger, 
 or a wolf — tliough both were very uncommon in that pleasant 
 isle of Walcheren ; but which plainly had no business there. 
 Whereon he took up a mighty staft", and strode over the fen 
 to see. 
 
 He found neither wolf nor badger : but to his exceeding sur- 
 prise, a long lean man, clothed in ragged horse-skins, whinnying 
 and neighing exactly like a horse, and then stooping to eat 
 grass like one. He advanced to do the first thing that came 
 into his head, namely, to break the man's back with his staff, 
 and ask him afterwards who he might be. But ere he could 
 strike, the man or horse kicked up with its hind legs in his 
 face, and then springing on to the said hind legs ran away with 
 extraordinary swiftness some fifty yards ; after which it went 
 down on all fours and began grazing again. 
 
 ' Beest thou man or devil 1 ' cried Dirk, somewhat frightened. 
 
 The thing looked up. The face at least was human. 
 
 ' Art thou a Christian man 1 ' asked it in bad Frisian, inter- 
 mixed with snorts and neighs. 
 
 ' What's that to thee 1 ' growled Dii^k ; and began to wish a 
 little that he was one, having heard that the sign of the cross 
 was of great virtue in driving away fiends. 
 
 ' Thou art not Christian. Thou believest in Thor and Odin 1 
 Then there is hope.' 
 
 ' Hope of what 1 ' Dirk was growing more and more fright- 
 ened. 
 
 ' Of her, my sister ! Ah, my sister, can it be that I shall find 
 thee at last, after ten thousand miles, and seven years of woeful 
 wandering ? ' 
 
 ' I have no man's sister here. At least, my wife's brother was 
 killed ' 
 
 'I speak not of a sister in woman's shape. Mine, alas ! — O 
 woeful prince, O more woeful princess — eats the herb of the 
 field somewhere in the shape of a mare, as ugly as she was once 
 beautiful, but swifter than the swallow on the wing.' 
 
 'I've none such here,' quoth Dirk, thoroughly frightened, 
 and glancing uneasily at mare Swallow. 
 
 'You have not? Alas, wretched me! It was prophesied to 
 me by the witch that I should find her in the field of one who 
 worshipped the old gods ; for liad she come across a holy priest, 
 she had been a woman again, long ago. Whither must I wander 
 afresh ! ' And the thing began weeping bitterly, and then ate 
 more grass. 
 
 ' I — that is — thou poor miserable creature,' said Dirk, half 
 pitying, half wisliing to turn the subject ; 'leave off making a 
 beast of thyself awliile, and tell mc who thou art.' 
 
 ' I have made no beast of myself, most noble earl of the
 
 126 IIEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 Frisians, for so you doubtless are. I was made a beast of — 
 a liorse of, by an enchanter of a certain land, and my sister a 
 mare.' 
 
 'Thou dost not say so ! ' quoth Dirk, who considered such an 
 event quite possible. 
 
 ' I was a prince of the county of Alboronia, which lies between 
 Cathay and the Mountains of the Moon, as fair once as I am 
 foul now, and only less fair than my lost sister ; and by the 
 enchantments of a cruel magician we became what we are.' 
 
 ' But thou art not a horse, at all events ? ' 
 
 ' Am I not ? Thou knowest, then, more of me than I do of 
 myself,' and it ate more grass. ' But hear the rest of my story. 
 My hapless sister was sold away with me to a merchant : but I, 
 breaking loose from him, tied until I bathed in a magic fountain. 
 At once I recovered my man's shape, and was rejoicing therein, 
 when, out of the fountain rose a fairy more beautiful than an 
 elf, and smiled uj^on me with love. 
 
 ' She asked me my story, and I told it. And when it was 
 told — " Wretch ! " she cried, " and coward, who hast deserted 
 thy sister in her need. I would have loved thee, and made thee 
 immortal as myself : but now thou shalt wander ugly and eating 
 grass, clothed in the horse-hide which has just dropped from 
 thy limbs, till thou shalt find thy sister, and bring her to bathe, 
 like thee, in this magic well." ' 
 
 ' All good spirits help us ! And you are really a prince 1 ' 
 
 'As surely,' cried the thing with a voice of sudden rapture, 
 ' as that mare is my sister ; ' and he rushed at mare Swallow. 
 ' I see, I see, my mother's eyes, my father's nose ' 
 
 'He must have been a chuckle -headed king that, then,' 
 grinned Dirk to himself. ' The mare's nose is as big as a buck- 
 basket. But how can she be a princess, man — prince I mean ? 
 she has a foal running by her hei'e.' 
 
 'A foal?' said the thing solemnly. ' Let me behold it. Alas, 
 alas, my sister ! Thy tyrant's threat has come true, that thou 
 shouldst be his bride whether thou wouldst or not. I see, I see 
 in the features of thy son his hated lineaments.' 
 
 'Why he must be as like a horse, then, as your father. But 
 this will not do, Master Horse-man ; I know tliat foal's pedigree 
 better than I do my own.' 
 
 ' Man, man, simple though honest ! — Hast tliou never heard 
 of the skill of the enchanters of the East ? How they transform 
 their victims at night back again into human shape, and by 
 day into the shape of beasts again ? * 
 
 ' Yes — well — I know that ' 
 
 ' And do you not see how you are deluded ? Every night, 
 doubt not, that mare and foal take their human shape again ; 
 and every night, perhaps, that foul enchanter visits in your fen, 
 perhaps in your very stable, his wretched bride restored (alas, 
 only for an hour !) into her human shape.'
 
 xiir HOW HEREWARD AVON MARE SWALLOW 127 
 
 'An enchanter in my stable? That is an ugly guest. But 
 no. I've been into the stables fifty times, to see if that mare 
 was safe. Mare was mare, and colt was colt, Mr. Prince, if I 
 have eyes to see.' 
 
 'And what are eyes against enchantments? The moment 
 you opened the door, the spell was cast over them again. You 
 ought to thank your stars that no worse has haj^pened yet ; 
 that the enchanter, in fieeing, has not wrung your neck as he 
 went out, or cast a spell on you, which will tire your barns, 
 lame your geese, give your fowls the pip, your horses the 
 glanders, your cattle the murrain, your childi-en St. Vitus' 
 dance, your wife the creeping palsy, and yourself the chalk- 
 stones in all your fingers.' 
 
 ' All saints have mercy on me ! If the half of this be true, I 
 wall turn Christian. I Avill send for a priest, and be baptized 
 to-morrow ! ' 
 
 ' O my sister, my sister ! Dost thou not know me ? Dost 
 thou answer my caresses with kicks ? Or is thy heart, as well 
 as thy body, so enchained by that cruel necromancer, that thou 
 preferrest to be his, and scornest thine own salvation, leaving 
 me to eat grass till I die ? ' 
 
 ' I say, prince — I say — what would you have a man to do ? I 
 bought the mare honestly, and I have kept her well. She can't 
 say aught against me on that score. And wliether she be 
 princess or not, I'm loth to part witli her.' 
 
 ' Keep her then, and keep with lier the curse of all the saints 
 and angels. Look down, ye holy saints' (and the thing poured 
 out a long string of saints' names), ' and avenge this catliolic 
 princess, kept in vile durance by an unbaptized heathen ! May 
 his ' 
 
 ' Don't, don't ! ' roared Dirk. ' And don't look at me like that' 
 (for he feared the evil eye), ' or I'll brain you with my staff ! ' 
 
 ' Fool ! If I have lost a horse's figure, I have not lost his 
 swiftness. Ere thou couldst strike, I should have run a mile 
 and back, to curse thee afresh.' And the thing ran round him, 
 and fell on all fours again, and ate grass. 
 
 ' Mercy, mercy ! And tliat is more than I ever asked yet of 
 man. But it is hard,' growled he, 'that a man sliould lose his 
 money, because a rogue sells him a princess in disguise.' 
 
 'Tlien .sell her again ; sell her, as thou valuest thy life, to the 
 first Cin-istian man thou meetest. And yet no. What matters ? 
 Ere a month be over, the seven years' enchantment will have 
 passed ; and she will return to her own shape, with her son, and 
 vanish from thy farm, leaving thee to vain repentance ; whereby 
 thou wilt l^^th lose thy money and get her curse. Farewell, and 
 my malison alnde with thee ! ' 
 
 And the thing, without another word, ran right away, 
 neighing as it went, leaving Dii-k in a state of al)ject terror. 
 
 He went home. He cursed the mare, he cursed the man who
 
 128 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 sold her, lie cursed the day he saw her, he cursed the day he was 
 born. He told his story with exaggerations and confusions in 
 l^lenty to all in the liouse ; and terror fell on them likewise. No 
 one, that evening, dared go down into the fen to drive the 
 horses up ; while Dirk got very drunk, went to bed, and 
 trembled there all night (as did the rest of the household), 
 expecting the enchanter to enter on a flaming fire-drake, at 
 every howl of the wind. 
 
 Tlie next morning, as Dirk was going about his business with 
 a doleful face, casting stealthy glances at the fen, to see if the 
 mysterious mare was still there, and a chance of his money still 
 left, a man rode up to the dooi". 
 
 He was poorly clothed, with a long rusty sword by his side. 
 A broad felt hat, long boots, and a haversack behind his saddle, 
 showed him to be a traveller, seemingly a horse dealer ; for 
 there followed him, tied head and tail, a brace of sorry 
 nags. 
 
 ' Heaven save all here,' quoth he, making the sign of the 
 ci'oss. ' Can any good Christian give me a drink of milk ? ' 
 
 ' Ale, if thou wilt,' said Dirk. ' But what art thou, and 
 whence ? ' 
 
 On any other day he would have tried to coax his guest into 
 trying a bufiet with him for his horse and clothes : but this 
 morning his heart was heavy with the thought of the enchanted 
 mare, and he welcomed the chance of selling her to the stranger. 
 
 'We are not very fond of strangers about here, since these 
 Flemings have been harrying our borders. If thou art a spy, it 
 will be worse for thee.' 
 
 'I am neither spy nor Fleming, but a poor servant of the 
 Lord Bishop of Utrecht's, buying a garron or two for his lord- 
 ship's priests. As for these Flemings, may St. John Baj^tist 
 save from them both me and you. Do you know of any man 
 who has horses to sell hereabouts ? ' 
 
 ' There are horses in the fen yonder,' quoth Dirk, who knew 
 that churchmen were likely to give a liberal price, and pay in 
 good silver. 
 
 ' I saw them as I rode up. And a fine lot they are : but of 
 too good a stamp for my short purse, or for my holy master's 
 riding, — a fat priest likes a quiet nag, my master. 
 
 'Humph. Well, if quietness is what you need, there is a 
 mare down there, that a child might ride with a thread of wool. 
 But as for price And she has a colt, too, running by her.' 
 
 ' Ah ? ' quoth the horseman. ' Well, your Walcheren folk 
 make good milk, that's certain. A colt by her ? That's awk- 
 ward. My lord does not like young liorses ; and it would be 
 troublesome, too, to take the thing along with me.' 
 
 The less anxious the dealer seemed to buy, the more anxious 
 grew Dirk to sell ; but he concealed his anxiety, and let the 
 stranger turn away, thanking him for his drink.
 
 xiii HOW HEREWARD WON MARE SWALLOW 129 
 
 ' I say ! ' lie called after him. ' You might look at her, as you 
 ride past the lierd.' 
 
 The stranger assented ; and they went down into the fen, 
 and looked over the precious mare, whose feats were afterwards 
 sung by many an English fireside, or in the forest beneath the 
 hollins green, by such as Eobin Hood and his merry men. The 
 ugliest as well as the swiftest of mares she was, say the old 
 chroniclers ; and it was not till tlie stranger had looked twice 
 at her, that he forgot her great chuckle-head, greyhound ilanks, 
 and drooping hindquarters, and began to see the great length 
 of those same quarters, the thighs let down into the hocks, the 
 compact loin, the extraordinary girth through the saddle, the 
 sloping shoulder, the long arms, tlie flat knees, the large well-set 
 hoofs, and all the other points which showed her strength and 
 speed, and justified her fame. 
 
 ' She might carry a big man like you through the mud,' said 
 he carelessly ; ' but as for pace, one cannot expect that with 
 such a chuckle-liead. And if one rode her through a town, the 
 boys would call after one, _" All head and no tail." Why, I can't 
 see her tail for her croup, it is so ill set on.' 
 
 ' 111 set on, or none,' said Dirk_ testily, ' don't go to speak 
 against her pace till you have seen it. Here, lass ! ' 
 
 Dirk was in liis heart rather afraid of the princess ; but he 
 was comforted when she came up to him like a dog. 
 
 ' She's as sensible as a woman,' said he ; and then grumbled 
 to himself, 'may be slie knows I mean to part with her.' 
 
 ' Lend me your saddle,' said he to the stranger. 
 
 The stranger did so ; and Dirk, mounting, galloped her in a 
 ring. There was no doubt of her powers as soon as she began 
 to move. 
 
 ' I hope you won't remember this against me, madam,' said 
 Dirk, as soon as he got out of the stranger's hearing. ' I can't 
 do less than sell you to a Christian. And certainly I have been 
 ' as good a master to you as if I'd known who you were ; but if 
 you wish to stay with me, you've only to kick me oft", and say 
 so ; and I'm yours to command.' 
 
 ' Well, she can gallop a bit,' said tlie stranger, as Dirk pulled 
 her up and dismounted ; ' but an ugly brute she is, nevertheless, 
 and such an one as I should not care to ride, for I am a gay man 
 among the ladies. However, what is your price ? ' 
 
 Dirk named twice as much as he would have taken. 
 
 ' Half that, you mean.' And the usual haggle began. 
 
 ' Tell thee what,' said Dirk at last. ' I am a man who has his 
 fancies ; and this shall be her price : half thy bid, and a box on 
 the ear.' 
 
 The demon of covetousness had entered Dirk's heart. What 
 if he got the money, brained, or at least disabled tlie stranger, 
 and so had a chance of selling the mare a second time to some 
 fresh comer 1 
 
 K H. T. W.
 
 130 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' Tliou art a strange fellow,' quoth the horse-dealer, ' But so 
 be it.' 
 
 Dirk chuckled. 'He does not know,' thought he, 'that he 
 has to do with Dirk Hammerhand,' and he clenched his fist in 
 anticipation of his rough joke. 
 
 'There,' quoth the stranger, counting out the money care- 
 fully, ' is thy coin. And there — is thy box on the ear.' 
 
 And with a blow which rattled over the fen, he felled Dirk 
 Hammerhand to the ground. 
 
 He lay senseless for a moment, and then looked wildly round. 
 
 ' Villain ! ' groaned he. ' It was I who was to give the buffet, 
 not thou ! ' 
 
 ' Art mad ? ' asked the stranger, as he coolly picked up the 
 coins, which Dirk had scattered in his fall. ' It is the seller's 
 business to take, and the buyer's to give.' 
 
 And while Dirk roared in vain for help, he leapt on Swallow, 
 and rode off" shouting, 
 
 ' Aha ! Dirk Hammerhand ! So you thought to knock a hole 
 in my skull, as you have done to many a better man than your- 
 self? He must be a luckier man than you who catches The 
 Wake asleep. I shall give your love to the enchanted prince, 
 my faithful serving man, whom they call Martin Lightfoot.' 
 
 Dick cursed the day he was born. Instead of the mare and 
 colt, he had got the two wretched garrons which the stranger 
 had left, and a face which made him so tender of his own teeth, 
 that he never again offered to try a buffet with a stranger. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 HOW HEREWARD RODE INTO BRUGES LIKE A BEGGARMAN 
 
 The spring and summer had passed, and the autumn was 
 almost over, when great news came to the court of Bruges, 
 where Torfrida was now a bower-maiden. 
 
 The Zeelanders had been beaten till they submitted ; at least 
 for the present. There was peace, at least for the present, 
 through all the isles of Scheldt ; and more than all, the lovely 
 Countess Gertrude had resolved to reward her chamj^ion by 
 giving him her hand, and the guardianship of her lands and her 
 infant son. 
 
 And Hereward 1 
 
 From him, or of him, there was no word. That he was alive 
 and fighting was all the messenger could say. 
 
 T]ien Robert came back to Bruges, with a gallant retinue, 
 leading home his bride. And there met him his father and 
 mother, and his brother of Mons, and Richilda the beautiful and 
 terrible sorceress — who had not yet stained her soul with those 
 crimes which she expiated by fearful joenances in after years,
 
 XEV HOW HERE\YARD RODE INTO BRUGES 131 
 
 when young Arnoul, the son for whom she had sold her soul, 
 lay dead upon the battlefield which was to have made him a 
 mighty prince. And Torf rida went out with the nobles to meet 
 Count Eobert, and looked for Hereward, till her eyes were ready 
 to fall out of her head. But Hereward was not with them. 
 
 ' He must be left behind, commanding the army,' thought she. 
 * But he might have sent one word ! ' 
 
 There was a great feast that day, of course ; and Torf rida sat 
 thereat : but she could not eat. Nevertheless she was too proud 
 to let the knights know what was in her heart ; so she chatted 
 and laughed as gaily as the rest, watching always for any word 
 of Hereward. But none mentioned his name. 
 
 The feast was long ; the ladies did not rise till nigh bedtime ; 
 and then the men drank on. 
 
 They went up to the queen -countess' chamber, where a 
 solemn undressing of that royal lady usually took place. 
 
 The etiquette was this. The queen-countess sat in her chair 
 of state in the midst, till her shoes were taken off, and her hair 
 di'essed for the night. Eight and left of her, according to their 
 degrees, sat the other great ladies ; and behind each of them, 
 where they could find jjlaces, the maidens. 
 
 It was Torfrida's turn to take off" the royal shoes ; and she 
 advanced into the middle of the semicircle, slippers in hand. 
 
 ' Stop there ! ' said the countess-queen. 
 
 Wliereat Torf rida stopjoed, very much frightened. 
 
 'Countesses and ladies,' said the mistress, 'there are, in Pro- 
 vence and the South, what I wish there were here in Flanders 
 — courts of love, at which all offenders against the sacred laws 
 of Venus and Cupid are tried by an assembly of their peers, and 
 punished according to their deserts.' 
 
 Torfrida turned scarlet. 
 
 ' I know not why we, countesses and ladies, should have less 
 knowledge of the laws of love than those gayer dames of the 
 Soutli, whose blood runs — to judge by her dark hair — in the 
 veins of you fair maid.' 
 
 There was a silence. Torfrida was the most beautiful woman 
 in the room ; more beautiful tlian even Eicliilda the terrible ; 
 and therefore there were few but were glad to see her — as it 
 seemed — in trouble. 
 
 Torfrida's mother began whimpering, and praying to six or 
 seven saints at once. But nobody marked lier — possibly not 
 even the saints ; being preoccupied with Torfrida. 
 
 'I hear, fair maid — for that you are that I will do you the 
 justice to confess — that you are old enough to be married this 
 four years since.' 
 
 Torfrida stood like a stone, frightened out of her wits, j)lenti- 
 ful as they were. 
 
 ' Why are you not married 1 ' 
 
 There was, of course, no answer.
 
 132 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' I hear that knights have fought for you ; lost their lives for 
 you.' 
 
 ' I did not bid them,' gasped Torfrida, longing that the floor 
 would open and swallow up the queen-countess and all her kin 
 and followers, as it did for the enemies of the blessed Saint Dun- 
 stan, while he was arguing with them in an upper room at Calne. 
 
 ' And that the knight of St. Valeri, to whom you gave your 
 favour, now lies languishing of wounds got in your cause.' 
 
 ' I— I did not bid him tight,' gasped Torfrida, now wishing 
 that the floor would open and swallow up herself. 
 
 'And that he who overthrew the knight of St. Valeri — to 
 whom you gave that favoui', and more ' 
 
 ' I gave him nothing a maiden might not give,' cried Torfrida, 
 so fiercely that the queen-countess recoiled somewhat. 
 
 ' I never said that you did, girl. Your love you gave him. 
 Can you deny that V 
 
 Toi-frida laughed bitterly : her Southern blood was rising. 
 
 ' I put my love out to nurse, instead of weaning it, as many 
 a maiden has done before me, and thought no harm. When my 
 love cried for hunger and cold, I took it back again to my own 
 bosom ; and whether it has lived or died there, is no one's matter 
 but my own.' 
 
 ' Hunger and cold 1 I hear that him to whom you gave your 
 love, you drove out to the cold, bidding him go fight in his bare 
 shirt, if lie wished to win your love.' 
 
 'I did not. He angered me— He ' and Torfrida found 
 
 herself in the act of accusing Hereward. 
 
 She stopped instantly. 
 
 ' What more, your highness ? If this be true, what more may 
 not be true of such an one as I ? I submit myself to your royal 
 grace.' 
 
 'She has confessed. What punishment, ladies, does she 
 deserve? Or, ratlier, what punishment would her cousins of 
 Provence inflict, did we send her southward, to be judged by 
 their courts of love ? ' 
 
 One lady said one thing, one another. Some spoke cruelly, 
 some worse than cruelly, for they were coarse ages, tlie ages of 
 faith ; and ladies said things then in open company which 
 gentlemen would be ashamed to say in pi-ivate now. 
 
 ' Marry her to a fool,' said Richilda, at last, bitterly. 
 
 'That is too common a misfortune,' answered the lady of 
 France. ' If we did no more to her, she might grow as proud as 
 her betters.' 
 
 Adela knew that her daughter-in-law considered her husband 
 a fool ; and was somewhat of the same opinion, though she 
 hated Ilicliilda. 
 
 ' No,' said she ; ' we will do more. We will marry her to the 
 first man who enters the castle.' 
 
 Torfrida looked at her mistress to see if she were mad. But
 
 XIV HOW HEREWARD RODE IXTO BRUGES 133 
 
 the countess -queen was serene and sane. Then Torfrida's 
 Southern heat and northern courage burst forth. 
 
 ' You ? marry ? me ? to 1 ' said she slowly, with eyes so 
 
 fierce and lips so livid, that Adela herself quailed. 
 
 There was a noise of shouting and laughing in the court 
 below, which made all turn and listen. 
 
 The next moment a serving-man came in, puzzled, and in- 
 clined to laugh. 
 
 ' May it please your highness, here is the strangest adventure. 
 There is ridden into tlie castle-yard a beggarman with scarce a 
 shirt to his back, on a great ugly mare with a foal running by 
 her ; and a fool behind him carrying lance and shield. And he 
 says that he is come to fight any knight of the court, ragged as 
 he stands, for the fairest lady in the court, be she who she may, 
 if she have not a wedded husband already.' 
 
 ' And what says my lord marquis 1 ' 
 
 ' That it is a fair challenge and a good adventure ; and that 
 fight he shall, if any man will answer his defiance.' 
 
 ' And I say, tell my lord marquis that fight he shall not ; for he 
 shall have the fairest maiden in this court for the trouble of carry- 
 ing her away, and that I, Adela of France, will give her to him. 
 So let tliat beggar dismount, and be brought wp hither to me.' 
 
 There was silence again. Torfrida looked round her once 
 more to see whether or not she was dreaming, and whether 
 there was one human being to whom she could appeal. Her 
 mother sat praying and weeping in a corner. Torfrida looked 
 at her with one glance of scorn, which she confessed and 
 repented, with bitter tears, many a year after, iii a foreign land ; 
 and then turned to bay with tlie spirit of her old Paladin an- 
 cestor, who choked the Emir at Montmajour. 
 
 Married to a beggar ! It was a strange accident, and an ugly 
 one, and a great cruelty and wrong. But it was not impossible 
 hardly improbable, in days when the capi-ice of the strong 
 created accidents, and when cruelty and wrong went for 
 nothing, even with very kindly honest folk. So Torfrida faced 
 the danger, as she would liave faced tliat of a kicking horse or 
 a flooded ford ; and, like the nut-brown bride, 
 
 ' She pulled out a little penknife, 
 That was both keen and sharp,' 
 
 and considered that the beggarman could wear no armour, and 
 that she wore none either. For if she succeeded in slaying that 
 beggarman, she miglit need to slay herself after, to avoid being 
 — according to the fashion of those days — burnt alive. 
 
 So when the arras was drawn back, and that beggarman 
 came into the room, instead of sliricking, fainting, hiding, or 
 turning, slie made tliree steps straight toward him, looking liim 
 in the face like a wild cat at bay. Then slie threw up her arms, 
 and fell U2wn his neck.
 
 134 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 It was Herewarcl himself. Filthy, ragged : but Hereward. 
 
 His shirt was brown with gore, and torn with wounds ; and 
 througli its rents showed more than one hardly healed scar. His 
 hair and beard was all in elf-locks ; and one heavy cut across 
 the head had shorn not only hair, but brain-pan very close. 
 
 But Hereward it was ; and regardless of all beholders, she 
 lay upon his neck, and never stirred nor spoke. 
 
 ' I call you to witness, ladies,' cried the queen-countess, ' that I 
 am guiltless. She has given herself to this beggarman of her own 
 free will. What say you ? ' And she turned to Toi-f rida's mother. 
 
 Torfrida's mother only pi^ayed and whimpered. 
 
 ' Countesses and ladies,' said the queen-countess, ' there will 
 be two weddings to-morrow. The first will be that of my son 
 Robert and my pretty Lady Gertrude here. The second will be 
 that of my pretty Torfrida and Hereward.' 
 
 'And the second bride,' said the Countess Gertrude, rising 
 and taking Torfrida in her arms, ' will be ten times prettier 
 than the first. There, sir, I have done all you asked of me. 
 Now go and wash yourself.' 
 
 ' Hereward,' said Torfrida, a week after, ' and did you never 
 change your shirt all that time ? ' 
 
 ' Never. I kept my promise.' 
 
 ' But it must have been very nasty.' 
 
 ' Well, I bathed now and then.' 
 
 ' But it must have been very cold.' 
 
 ' I am warm enough now.' 
 
 ' But did you never comb your hair, either ? ' 
 
 'Well, I won't say that. Travellers find strange bedfellows. 
 But I had half a mind never to do it at all, just to spite you.' 
 
 ' And what matter would it have been to me ? ' 
 
 ' Oh ! none. It is only a Danish fashion we have of keeping 
 clean.' 
 
 ' Clean ? You were dirty enough when you came home. 
 How silly you were ! If you had sent me but one word ! ' 
 
 ' You would have fancied me beaten, and scolded me all over 
 again. I know your ways now, Torfrida.' 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 HOW EARL TOSTI GODWINSSON CAME TO ST. OMEE, 
 
 The winter passed in sweet madness ; and for the first time in her 
 life Torfrida regretted the lengthening of the days, and the flower- 
 ing of the primroses, and the return of the now needless wryneck ; 
 for they warned her that Hereward must forth to the wars in 
 Scaldmariland, which had broken out again, as was to be expected, 
 as soon as Count Robert and his bride had turned their backs.
 
 XV HOW EARL TOSTI GODWINSSON CAME TO ST. O.AIER 135 
 
 And Hereward, likewise for the first time in his life, was loth 
 to go to war. He was, doubtless, rich enough in this world's 
 goods. Toririda herself was rich, and seems to have had the 
 disposal of her own property ; for her mother is not mentioned 
 in connection therewith. Hereward seems to have dwelt in 
 her house at St. Omer as long as he remained in Flanders. He 
 had probably amassed some treasure of his own by the simple, 
 but then most aristocratic, method of plunder. He had, too, 
 probably, grants of land in Holland from the Fi'ison, the rents 
 whereof were not paid as regularly as might be. Moreover, as 
 ' Magister Militum,' ' Master of the Knights,' he had, it is likely, 
 pay as well as honour. And he approved himself worthy of his 
 good fortune. He kept forty gallant housecarles in his liall 
 all the winter, and Torfrida and her lasses made and mended 
 their clothes. He gave large gifts to the Abbey of St. Bertin ; 
 and had masses sung for the souls of all whom he had slain, 
 according to a rough list which he furnished — bidding the 
 monks not to be chary of two or three masses extra at times, 
 as his memory was short, and he might have sent more souls to 
 purgatory than he had recollected. He gave great alms at his 
 door to all the poor. He befriended, especially, all shipwrecked 
 and needy mariners, feeding and clothing them, and begging 
 their freedom as a gift from Baldwin. He feasted the knights 
 of the neighbourhood, who since his Baresark campaign, had all 
 vowed him the most gallant of warriors, and since his accession 
 of wealth, the most courteous of gentlemen ; and all went 
 merrily, as it is written, ' As long as thou dost well unto thyself, 
 men will speak well of thee.' 
 
 So he would have fain stayed at home at St. Omer ; but he 
 was Robert's man, and his good friend likewise ; and to the wars 
 he must go forth once more ; and for eight or nine weary months 
 Torfrida was alone, but very happy, for a certain reason of her 
 own. 
 
 At last the short November days came round, and a joyful 
 woman was fair Torfrida, when Martin Lightfoot ran into the 
 hall, and throwing himself down on the rushes like a dog, 
 announced tliat Hereward and his men would be home before 
 noon, and then fell fast asleep. 
 
 There was bustling to and fro of her and her maids, decking 
 of the hall in the best hangings, strewing of fresh rushes, to the 
 dislodgment of Martin, setting out of boards and trestles, a,nd 
 stoops and mugs thereon ; cooking of victuals, broaching of casks ; 
 and, above all, for Hereward's self, heating of mucli water, and 
 setting out, in the inner chamber, of the great bath-tub and bath- 
 sheet, which was the special delight of a hero fresh from war. 
 
 And by mid-day the streets of St. Omei' rang witli claidc, and 
 tramp, and trumpet-blare, and in marched Hereward ;iiul all his 
 men, and swung round through the gateway into the court, 
 where Torfrida stood to welcome them, as fair as day, a silver
 
 136 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 stirrup-cup in her hand. And while tlie men were taking off 
 their harness and dressing their horses, she and Hereward went 
 in together, and either took such joy of the other, that a year's 
 parting was forgot in a minute's meeting. 
 
 ' Now ! ' cried she, in a tone half of triumph, half of tender- 
 ness ; ' look there ! ' 
 
 'A cradle? And a baby?' 
 
 ' Your baby.' 
 
 'Is it a boy ? ' asked Hereward, who saw in his mind's eye a 
 thing which would grow and broaden at his knee year by year, 
 and learn from him to ride, to shoot, to fight. ' Happy for him 
 if he does not learn worse from me,' thought Hereward, with a 
 sudden movement of humility and contrition, which was surely 
 marked in heaven ; for Torfrida marked it on earth. 
 
 But she mistook its meaning. 
 
 ' Do not be vexed. It is a girl.' 
 
 ' Never mind.' As if it was a calainity over which lie was 
 bound to comfort the mother. ' If she is half as beautiful as 
 you look at this moment, what sj^lintering of lances there will 
 be about her ! How jolly, to see the lads hewing at each other, 
 while our daughter sits in the pavilion as Queen of Love ! ' 
 
 Torfrida laughed. ' You think of nothing but fighting, bear 
 of the North Seas.' 
 
 ' Every one to his trade. Well, yes, I am glad that it is a girl.' 
 
 ' I thought you seemed vexed. Why did you cross yourself ? ' 
 
 ' Because I thought to myself, how unfit I was to bring up a 
 boy to be such a knight as — as you would have him ; — how 
 likely I was, ere all was over, to make him as great a rufiian as 
 myself.' 
 
 ' Hereward ! Hereward ! ' and she threw her arms round his 
 neck for the tenth time. ' Blessed be you for those words ! 
 Those are the fears which never come true, for they bring down 
 from heaven the grace of God, to guard the humble and contrite 
 heart from that which it fears.' 
 
 ' Ah, Torfrida, I wish I were as good as you ! ' 
 
 'Now — my joy and my life, my hero and my scald — I have 
 great news for you, as well as a little baby. News from 
 England.' 
 
 'You, and a baby over and above, are worth all England 
 to me.' 
 
 ' But listen. Edward the king is dead.' 
 
 ' Then there is one fool less on earth ; and one saint more, I 
 suppose, in heaven.' 
 
 'And Harold Godwinsson is king in his stead. And he has 
 married your niece Aldytha, and sworn friendship with her 
 brothers.' 
 
 ' I expected no less. Well, every dog has his day.' 
 
 'And his will be a short one. William of Normandy has 
 sworn to drive him out.'
 
 XV HOW EARL TOSTI GODWINSSON CAME TO ST. OMER 137 
 
 ' Then he will do it. And so the poor little Swan-neck is 
 packed into a convent, that the houses of Godwin and Leofric 
 may rush into each other's arms, and perish together ! Fools, 
 fools, fools ! I will hear no more of such a mad world. My 
 queen, tell me about your sweet self. What is all this to me 1 
 Am I not a wolf's head, and a landless man 1 ' 
 
 ' O my king, have not the stars told me that you will be an 
 earl and a ruler of men, when all your foes are wolves' heads as 
 you are now ? And the weird is coming true already. Tosti 
 Godwinsson is in the town at this moment, an outlaw and a 
 wolf's head himself.' 
 
 Hereward laughed a great laugh. 
 
 'Aha ! Every man to his riglit place at last. Tell me about 
 that, for it w^ill amuse me. I have heard nought of him since 
 he sent the king his Hereford thralls' arms and legs in the 
 pickle-barrels ; to show him, he said, that there was plenty of 
 cold meat on his royal demesnes.' 
 
 'You have not heard, then, how he murdered, in his own 
 chamber at York, Gamel Ormsson and Ulf Dolfinsson?' 
 
 ' That poor little lad 1 Well, a gracious youth was Tosti, ever 
 since he went to kill his brother Harold with teeth and claws, 
 like a wolf ; and as he grows in years, he grows in grace. But 
 what said Ulf 's father and the Gospatrics ? ' 
 
 'They were I know not where. But old Gospatric came 
 down to Westminster, to demand law for his grand-nephew's 
 blood.' 
 
 'A silly thing of the old thane, to walk into the wolf's den.' 
 
 'And so he found. He was stabbed there, three days after 
 Christmastide, and men say that Queen Edith did it for love 
 of Tosti, her brother. Then Dolfin and the Gospatrics took to 
 sea, and away to iScotland ; and so Tosti rid himself of all the 
 good blood in the north, except young Waltheof Siwardsson, 
 whose turn, I fear, will come next.' 
 
 'How comes he here, then?' 
 
 ' The northern men rose at that, killed his servant at York ; 
 took all his treasures ; and marched down to Northampton, 
 plundering and burning. They would have marched on 
 London town, if Harold had not met them tliei'e from the king. 
 There they cried out against Tosti, and all liis taxes, and his 
 murders, and his changing Canute's laws, and would have your 
 nephew ^lorcar for their earl. A tyrant they would not endure. 
 Free they were born and bred, they said, and free they would 
 live and die. Harold must needs do justice, even on his own 
 brother.' 
 
 ' Esj^ecially when he knows that that brother is his worst 
 foe.' 
 
 ' Harold is a better man than you take him for, my Hereward. 
 But be that as it may, ^lorcar is earl ; and Tosti outlawed, and 
 here in St. Omer, with wife and child.'
 
 138 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' ^ly nephew Earl of Northumbria ! As I might have been, 
 if I had been a wiser man.' 
 
 ' If you had, you would never have found me.' 
 ' True, my queen ! They say heaven tempers the wind to the 
 shorn lamb ; but it tempers it too, sometimes, to the hobbled 
 ass ; and so it has done by me. And so the rogues have fallen 
 out, and honest men may come by their own. For as the 
 northern men have done by one brother, so will the eastern men 
 do by the other. Let Harold see how many of those fat Lincoln- 
 shire manors, which he has seized into his own hands, he holds 
 by this day twelve months. But what is all this to me, my 
 queen, while you and I can kiss, and laugh the world to 
 scorn ? ' 
 
 ' This to you, beloved, that, great as you are, Torf rida must 
 have you greater still ; and out of all this coil and confusion 
 you may win something, if you be wise.'_ 
 
 'Sweet lips, be still ; and let us play instead of plotting.' 
 'And this, too — you shall not stop my mouth— that Harold 
 Godwinsson has sent a letter to you.' 
 
 'Harold Godwinsson is my very good lord,' sneered Here- 
 ward. 
 
 ' And this it said, with such praises and courtesies concerning 
 you as made my wife's heart beat higli with pride — "If Here- 
 ward Leofricsson will come home to England, he shall have his 
 rights in law again, and his manors in Lincolnshire, and a 
 thaneship in East Anglia, and manors for his men-at-arms ; and 
 if that be not enough, he shall have an earldom, as soon as there 
 is one to give." ' 
 
 ' And what says to that Torf rida, Hereward's queen 1 ' 
 ' You will not'be angry if I answered the letter for you ? ' 
 ' If you answer it in one way — no. If another — yes.' 
 Torf rida trembled. Then she looked Hereward full in the face 
 witli her keen clear eyes. 
 
 ' Now shall I see whether I have given myself to Hereward 
 in vain, body and soul, or whether I have trained him to be my 
 true and perfect knight.' 
 
 ' You answered, then,' said Hereward, ' thus— — ' 
 ' Say on,' said she, turning her face away again. 
 ' Hereward Leofricsson tells Harold Godwinsson that he is 
 his equal, and not his man ; and that he will never put his 
 Jiands between the hands of a son of Godwin. An Etheling 
 born, a king of the house of Cerdic, outlawed him from_ his 
 right, and none but an Etheling born shall give him his right 
 again.' 
 
 'I said it, I said it. Those were my very words!' and 
 Torf rida burst into tears, while Hereward kissed her, almost 
 fawned upon her, calling her his queen, his saga-wife, his 
 guardian angel. 
 
 ' I was sorely tempted,' sobbed she. ' Sorely. To see you rich
 
 XV HOW EARL TOSTI GODWINSSON CAME TO ST. OMER 139 
 
 and proud upon your own lands, an earl, may be— may be, I 
 thought at whiles, a king. But it could not be. It did not 
 stand with honour, my hero— not with honour.' 
 
 ' Not with honour. Get me gay garments out of the chest, 
 and let us go royally, and royally feast my jolly riders.' 
 
 'Stay awhile,' said she, kissing his head as she combed and 
 curled his long golden locks, and her own raven ones, hardly 
 more beautiful, fell over them and mingled with_them._ 'Stay 
 awhile, my pride. There is another spell in the wind, stirred up 
 by devil or witch-wife, and it comes from Tosti Godwinsson.' 
 
 ' Tosti, the cold-meat butcher 1 What has he to say to me ? ' 
 
 'This— "If Hereward will come with me to William of 
 Normandy, and help us against Harold the perjured, then will 
 William do for him all that Harold would have done, and more 
 beside." ' 
 
 ' And what answered Torf rida ? ' 
 
 ' It was not so said to me that I could answer. I had it by 
 a side wind through the Countess Judith.' ^ 
 
 ' And she had it from her sister Matilda.' 
 
 'And she, of course, from Duke William himself.' 
 
 ' And what would you have answered, if you had answered, 
 pretty one 1 ' 
 
 ' Nay, I know not. I cannot be always queen. You must be 
 king sometimes.' 
 
 Torfrida did not say that this latter offer had been a much 
 sorer temptation than the former. 
 
 ' And has not the base-born Frenchman enough knights of 
 his own, that he needs the help of an outlaw like me 1 ' 
 
 ' He asks for help from all the ends of tlie earth. He has 
 sent that Lanfranc to the pope ; and there is talk of a sacred 
 banner, and a crusade against England.' 
 
 ' The monks are with him, then 1 ' said Hereward. ' That is 
 one more count in their score. But I am no monk. I have 
 shorn many a crown, but I have kept my own hair as yet, 
 you see.' 
 
 ' I do see,' said she, playing with his locks. 'But— but he 
 wants you. He has sent for Angevins, Poitevins, Bretons, 
 Flemings — promising lands, rank, money, what not. Tosti is 
 recruiting for him here in Flanders now. He will soon be off to 
 the Orkneys, I suspect, or to Sweyn in Denmark, after Vikings.' 
 
 ' Here ? Has Baldwin promised him men 1 ' 
 
 ' What could the good old man do ? He could not refuse his 
 own son-in-law. This, at least, I know, that a messenger has 
 gone off to Scotland, to Gilbert of Ghent, to bring or send any 
 bold Flemings who may prefer fat England to lean Scotland.' 
 
 ' Lands, rank, money, eh ? So he intends that the war should 
 
 1 Tosti's wife. Earl Baldwin's daughter, sister of Matilda, William the 
 Conqueror's wife.
 
 140 HEREWARD -THE WAKE chap. 
 
 pay itself — out of English purses. What answer would you 
 have me make to tliat, wife mine ! ' 
 
 ' The Duke is a terrible man. What if he conquers ? And 
 conquer he will.' 
 
 ' Is that written in your stars ? ' 
 
 ' It is, I fear. And if we have the pope's blessing, and the 
 pope's banner Dare we resist tlie Holy Father ? ' 
 
 ' Holy stepfather, you mean ; for a stepfather he seems to 
 prove to merry England. But do you really believe that an old 
 man down in Italy can make a bit of rag conquer by saying a 
 few prayers at it ? If I am to believe in a magic flag, give me 
 Harold Hardraade's Landcyda, at least, with Harold and his 
 Norsemen behind it.' 
 
 ' William's French are as good as those Norsemen, man for 
 man ; and horsed withal, Hereward.' 
 
 ' Tliat may be,' said he, half testily, with a curse on the 
 tanner's grandson and his French popinjays, ' and our English- 
 men are as good as any two Norsemen, as the Norse themselves 
 say.' He could not divine, and Torf rida liardly liked to explain 
 to him, the glamour which the Duke of Normandy had cast 
 over her, as the representative of chivalry, learning, civil- 
 isation, a new and nobler life for men than the world had yet 
 seen ; one which seemed to connect the young races of EurojDe 
 with the wisdom of the ancients and the magic glories of old 
 Imperial Rome. 
 
 ' You are not fair to that man,' said she, after a while. ' Here- 
 ward, Hereward, have I not told you how, though body be 
 strong, mind is stronger ? That is what that man knows ; and 
 tlierefore he has prospered. Therefore his realms are full of 
 wise scholars, and thriving schools, and fair minsters, and his 
 men are sober, and wise, and learned like clerks ' 
 
 'And false like clerks, as he is himself. Schoolcraft and 
 honesty never went yet together, Torfrida ' 
 
 ' Not in me ? ' 
 
 ' You are not a clerk : you are a woman, and more than 
 woman ; you are an elf, a goddess ; there is none like you. But 
 hearken to me. This man is false. All the world knows it.' 
 
 'He promises, they say, to govern England justly as King 
 Edward's heir, according to the old laws and liberties of the 
 realm.' 
 
 ' Of course. If he does not come as the old monk's heir, how 
 does he come at all ? If he does not promise our — their, I mean, 
 for I am no Englishman — laws and liberties, who will join liim? 
 But his riders and hirelings will not fight for nothing. They 
 must be paid with English land, and English land they will 
 have, for they will be his men, whoever else are not. They will 
 be his darlings, his housecarles, his hawks to sit on his fist and 
 fly at his game ; and English bones will be picked clean to feed 
 them. And you would have me help to do that, Torfrida ? Is
 
 XV HOW EARL TOSTI GODWINSSON CAME TO ST. OMER 141 
 
 that the honour of which you spoke so boldly to Harold God- 
 winsson 1 ' 
 
 Torf rida was silent. To have brought Herewai'd under the 
 influence of Williana was an old dream of hers. And yet she 
 was proud at the dream being broken thus. And so she said — 
 
 ' You are right ! It is better for you — it is better than to be 
 William's darling, and the greatest earl in his court — to feel that 
 you are still an Englishman. Promise me but one tiling, that 
 you will make no fierce or desperate answer to the duke.' 
 
 ' And why not answer the tanner as he deserves 1 ' 
 
 ' Because my art, and my heart too, tells me that your for- 
 tunes and his are linked together. I have studied my tables, 
 but they would not answer. Then I cast lots in Virgilius ' 
 
 ' And what found you there 1 ' asked he anxiously. 
 
 'I opened at the lines — 
 
 ' " Pacem me exanimis et Martis sorte peremptis, 
 Oratis? Equidem et vivis concedere vellem." ' 
 
 ' And what means that 1 ' 
 
 ' That you may have to pray him to pity the slain ; and have 
 for answer, that their lands may be yours if you will but make 
 peace with liim. At least, do not break hopelessly with that 
 man. Above all, never use that word concerning him which 
 you used just now ; the word which he never forgives. Re- 
 member what he did to them of Alenqon, when they hung raw 
 hides over the wall, and cried, "Plenty of work for the 
 tanner ! " ' 
 
 'Let him pick out the prisoners' eyes, and chop oif their 
 hands, and shoot them into the town from mangonels. I know 
 , him : but he must go far and thrive well ere I give him a chance 
 of doing that by the Wake.' 
 
 * Hereward, Hereward, my own ! Boast not, but fear God. 
 Who knows, in such a world as this, to what end we may come? 
 Night after night I am haunted with spectres, eyeless, hand- 
 less ' 
 
 ' This is cold comfort for a man j ust out of hard fighting in 
 the ague-fens ! ' 
 
 She threw her arms round him, and held him as if she would 
 never let him go. 
 
 'When you die, I die. And you will not die: you will be 
 great and glorious, and your name will be sung by scald and 
 minstrel through many a land, far and wide. Only, be not rash. 
 P>e not high-minded. Promise me to answer this man wisely. 
 The more crafty lie is, tlie more crafty must you be likewise.' 
 
 ' Let us tell this miglity hero then,' said Hereward, trying to 
 laugh away lier fears^and perhaps liis own, 'that while he has 
 the Holy Father on liis side, he can need no help from a poor 
 sinful worm like me.' 
 
 ' Hereward, Hereward ! '
 
 142 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 'Why, is there aught about liides in that?' 
 
 ' I want — I want an answer which may not cut off all hope in 
 case of the worst.' 
 
 ' Then let us say boldly, " On the day that William is king of 
 all England, Hereward will come and put his hands between 
 his, and be his man." ' 
 
 That message was sent to William at Rouen. He laughed— 
 
 'It is a fair challenge from a valiant man. The day shall 
 come when I will claim it.' 
 
 Tosti and Hereward passed that winter in St. Omer, living in 
 the same street, passing each other day by day, and never spoke 
 a word one to the other. 
 
 Robert the Frison heard of it, and tried to persuade Here- 
 ward. 
 
 ' Let him purge himself of the murder of Ulf the boy, son of 
 my friend Dolfin ; and after that of Gamel, son of Orm ; and 
 after that again of Gospatric, my father's friend, whom his sister 
 slew for his sake : and then an honest man may talk with him. 
 Were he not my good lord's brother-in-law, as he is, more's the 
 pity, I would challenge him to fight a Voutrance, with any 
 weapons he might choose.' 
 
 ' Heaven protect him in that case,' quoth Robert the Frison. 
 
 ' As it is, I will keep the peace. And I will see that my men 
 keep the peace, though tliere are Scarborough and Bamborough 
 lads among them, who long to cut his throat upon the streets. 
 But more I will not do.' 
 
 So Tosti sulked through the winter at St. Omer. Suddenly 
 he turned traitor (no man knows why) to his good brother-in- 
 law and new ally, William of Normandy ; and went off to get 
 help from Sweyn of Denmark, and, failing that, from Harold 
 Hardraade of Norway. But how he sped there must be read 
 in the words of a cunninger saga-man than this chronicler.; 
 even in those of the Icelandic Homer, Snorro Sturleson. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 HOW HEREWARD AVAS ASKED TO SLAY AN OLD COMRADE 
 
 In those days Hereward went into Bruges, to Marquis Baldwin, 
 about his business. And as he walked in Bruges street, he met 
 an old friend, Gilbert of Ghent. 
 
 He had grown somewhat stouter, and somewhat grayer, in 
 the last ten years : but he was as hearty as ever, and as honest, 
 according to his own notions of honesty. 
 
 He shook Hereward by both liands, clapt him on the back, 
 swore witli many oaths that he had heard of his fame in all 
 lands, tliat he always said tliat lie would turn out a champion 
 and a gallant knight, and had said it long before he killed the
 
 XVI HOW HE WAS ASKED TO SLAY AN OLD COMRADE 143 
 
 bear. As for killing it, it was no more than he exiDCcted, and 
 nothing to what Herewaixl had done since, and would do 
 
 yet. 
 
 Wherefrom Hereward opined that Gilbert had need of him. 
 
 They chatted on : Hereward asking after old friends, and 
 sometimes after old foes, whom he had long since forgiven ; for 
 though he always avenged an injury, he never bore malice for 
 one : a distinction less common now than then, when a man's 
 honour, as well as his safety, depended on his striking again 
 when he was struck. 
 
 ' And how is little Alf trvida ?— Big she must be now 1 ' asked he 
 at last. 
 
 ' The fiend fly away with her — or rather, would that he had 
 flown away with her, before ever I saw the troublesome jade. 
 Big ? She is grown into the most beautiful lass that ever was 
 seen — which is, what a young fellow, like you, cares for ; and 
 more trouble to me than all my money, whicli is what an old 
 fellow, like me, cares for. It is partly about her that I am over 
 here now. Fool that I was, ever to let a jDrincess into my 
 house ; ' and Gilbert swore a great deal. 
 
 ' How was she a princess 1 1 forget,' said Hereward, who cared 
 nothing about the matter. 'And how came she into your 
 liouse ? I never could understand that, any more than how the 
 bear came there.' 
 
 ' Ah ? As to the bear, I have my secrets, which I tell no one. 
 He is dead and buried, thanks to you.' 
 
 ' And I sleep on his skin every night.' 
 
 ' You do, my little champion ? AVell — warm is the bed that is 
 well earned. But as for her ; — see here, and I'll tell you. She 
 was Gospatric's ward and kinswoman — how, I do not rightly 
 know. But this I know, that she comes from Uchtx^ed, the earl 
 whom Canute slew, and that she is heir to great estates in 
 Northumberland. ' 
 
 'Gospatric, that fought at Dunsinane ?' 
 
 * Yes, not the old thane, his uncle, Avhom Tosti has murdered : 
 but Gospatric, King Malcolm's cousin, Doltin's father. Well, 
 she was his ward. He gave me her to keep, for he wanted her 
 out of harm's way — the lass having a bonny dower, lands and 
 money — till he could marry her up to one of his sons. I took 
 her : but of course I was not going to do otlier men's work for 
 nought ; so I would have married her up to my poor boy, if he 
 had but lived. But lie would not live, as you knoAv. Then I 
 would have married her to you, and made you my heir, I tell 
 you honestly, if you had not flown off, like a hot-headed young 
 springald as you were tlien.' 
 
 ' You were very kind. But how is she a princess 1 ' 
 
 'Princess? Twice over. Her father was of higli l)lood 
 among tlie Saxons ; and if not, are not all the Gospatrics Etliel- 
 ings ? Their grandmother, Uchtred's wife, was Ethelred Evil-
 
 144 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 Counsel's daughter ; and I have heard that this girl's grandfather 
 was his son — but died young — or was killed. Who cares ? ' 
 
 ' Not I,' quoth Hereward. 
 
 'Well — Gospatric wants to marry her to Dolfin, his eldest 
 son.' 
 
 ' Why, Dolfin had a wife when I was at Dunsinane.' 
 
 ' But she is dead since, and young Ulf, her son, was murdered 
 l^y Tosti last winter.' 
 
 ' I know.' 
 
 'Whereupon Gospatric sends to me for the girl and her 
 dowry. What was I to do ? Give her up ? Little it is, lad, that 
 I ever gave up, after I had it once in my grip, or I should be a 
 poorer man than I am now. Have and hold, is my rule. What 
 should I do 1 What I did. I was coming hither on business of 
 my own, so I put her on board sliip, and half her dower — where 
 the other half is, I know ; and man must draw me with wild 
 horses _ before he finds out :— and came here to my kinsman, 
 Baldwin, to see if he had any proper young fellow to whom we 
 might marry the lass, and so go shares in her money and the 
 family connection. Could a man do more wisely 1 ' 
 
 ' Impossible,' quoth Hereward. 
 
 But see how a wise man is lost by fortune. When I come 
 here, wliom should I find but Dolfin himself ? The rogue had 
 scent of my plan, all the way from Dolfinston there, by Peebles. 
 He hunts me out, the hungry Scotch wolf ; rides for Leith, takes 
 ship, and is here to meet me, having accused me before Baldwin 
 as a robber and a ravisher, and offered to prove his right to the 
 jade on my body in single combat.' 
 
 ' The villain ! ' quoth Hereward. ' There is no modesty left 
 on earth, nor prudence either. To come here, where he might 
 have stumbled on Tosti, who murdered his son, and who would 
 surely do the like by him himself. Lucky for him that Tosti is 
 off to Norway on his own errand.' 
 
 ' Modesty and prudence ! None nowadays, young sire ; nor 
 justice either, I think ; for when Baldwin hears us both — and I 
 told my story as cannily as I could — lie tells me that he is very 
 sorry for an old vassal and kinsman, and so forth, — but I must 
 either disgorge or tight.' 
 
 ' Then fight,' quoth Hereward. 
 
 ' Per se aut per campionem, — that's the old law, you know.' 
 
 ' Not a doubt of it.' 
 
 ' Look you, Hereward. I am no coward, nor a clumsy man 
 of my hands.' 
 
 ' He is either fool or liar who says so.' 
 
 ' But see. T find it hard work to hold my own in Scotland 
 now. Folks don't like me, or trust me ; I can't say why.' 
 
 ' How unreasonable ! ' quoth Hereward. 
 
 'And if I kill this youth, and so have a blood-feud with 
 Gospatric, I have a hornet's nest about my ears. Not only he
 
 XVI HOW HE WAS ASKED TO SLAY AN OLD COilRADE 145 
 
 and his sons — who are masters of Scotch Northumberland ^ — 
 but all his cousins — King Malcolm, and Donaldbain, and, for 
 aught I know, Harold and the Godwinssons, if he bid them take 
 up the quarrel. And, besides, that Dolfin is a big man. If you 
 cross Scot and Saxon, you breed a very big man. If you cross 
 again with a Dane or a Norseman, you breed a giant. His 
 grandfather was a Scots prince, his grandmother an English 
 princess, his mother a Norse princess, as you know — and how 
 big he is, you should remember. He weighs half as much again 
 as I, and twice as much as you.' 
 
 ' Butchers count by weight, and knights by courage,' quoth 
 Hereward. 
 
 ' Very well for you, who are young and active : but I take 
 him to be a better man than that ogre of Cornwall, whom they 
 say you killed.' 
 
 ' What care 1 1 Let him be twice as good, I'll try him.' 
 
 ' Ah ! I knew you were the old Hereward still. Now hearken 
 to me. Be my champion. You owe me a service, lad. Fight 
 that man. Challenge him in open field. Kill him, as you are 
 sure to do. Claim the lass, and win her — and then we will 
 part her dower. And (though it is little that I care for young 
 lasses' fancies), to tell you truth, she never favoured any man 
 but you.' 
 
 Hereward started at the snare which had been laid for him ; 
 and then fell into a very great laughter. 
 
 ' My most dear and generous host : you are the wiser, the 
 older you grow. A plan worthy of Solomon ! Y^ou are rid of 
 Sieur Dolfin without any blame to yourself.' 
 
 'Just so.' 
 
 ' While I win the lass ; and, living here in Flanders, am 
 tolerably safe from any blood-feud of the Gospatrics.' 
 
 'Just so.' 
 
 ' Perfect : but there is only one small hindrance to the plan ; 
 and that is that I am married already.' 
 
 Gilbert stopped short, and swore a great oath. 
 
 ' But,' he said after a while, ' does that matter so much after 
 
 aiir 
 
 ' Very little, indeed, as all the world knows, if one has money 
 enough, and power enough.' 
 
 ' And you liave both, they say.' 
 
 ' But, still more unhappily, my money is my wife's.' 
 
 'Peste!' 
 
 'And more unhappily still, I am so foolishly fond of lier, 
 that I would sooner liave her in her smock, than any other 
 woman with half England for a dower.' 
 
 'Then I suppose I must look out for another champion.' 
 
 'Or save yourself the trouble, by being — just as a change — 
 an honest man.' 
 
 ^ Between Tweed and Forth. 
 L ir. T. w.
 
 146 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' I believe you are right,' said Gilbert, laughing ; ' but it is 
 hard to begin so late in life.' 
 
 ' And after one has had so little practice.' 
 
 ' Aha ! Thou art the same merry dog of a Hereward. Come 
 along. But could we not poison this Doltin after all 1 ' 
 
 To which proposal Hereward gave no encouragement. 
 
 'And now, my tres beau sire, may I ask you, in return, what 
 business brings you to Flanders 1 ' 
 
 ' Have I not told you ? ' 
 
 ' No, but I have guessed. Gilbert of Ghent is on his way to 
 William of Normandy.' 
 
 'Well. Why not?' 
 
 ' Why not ?— certainly. And lias brouglit out of Scotland a 
 few gallant gentlemen and stout housecarles of my acquaint- 
 ance.' 
 
 Gilbert laughed. 
 
 'You may well say that. To tell you the truth, we have 
 flitted, bag and baggage. I don't believe that we have left a 
 dog behind.' 
 
 'So you intend to "colonise" in England, as the learned 
 clerks would call it ? To settle ; to own land ; and enter, like 
 the Jews of old, into goodly houses which you builded not, 
 farms which you tilled not, wells which you digged not, and 
 orchards which you planted not ? ' 
 
 ' Why, what a learned clerk you are yourself ! That sounds 
 like Scripture.' 
 
 ' And so it is. I heard it in a French priest's sermon whicii 
 he preached here in St. Omer a Sunday or two back, exhorting 
 all good Catholics, in the pope's name, to enter upon the bar- 
 barous land of England, tainted with the sin of Simon Magus, 
 and expel thence the heretical priests, and so forth ; promising 
 them that they should have free leave to cut long thongs out of 
 otiier men s hides.' 
 
 Gilbert chuckled. 
 
 ' You laugh. The priest did not ; for after sermon I went up 
 to him, and told how I was an Englishman, and an outlaw, and 
 a desperate man, who feared neither saint nor devil ; and if I 
 heard such talk as that again in St. Omer, I would so shave the 
 speaker's crown that he should never need razor to his dying 
 day.' 
 
 ' And what is that to me ? ' said Gilbert, in an uneasy, half- 
 defiant tone ; for Hereward's tone had been more than half- 
 defiant. 
 
 ' This. That there are certain broad lands in England, which 
 were my father's, and are now my nephews' and my mother's, 
 and some wliicli should of right be mine. And I advise you, as 
 a friend, not to make entry on those lands, lest Hereward in 
 turn make entry on you. And who is he that will deliver you 
 out of my hand 1 '
 
 XVI HOW HE WAS ASKED TO SLAY AN OLD COMRADE 147 
 
 ' God and His saints alone, thou fiend out of tlie pit,' quotli 
 Gilbert, laughing. But he was growing warm, and began to 
 tutoyer Hereward. 
 
 ' I am in earnest, Gilbert of Ghent, my good friend of old time.' 
 
 'I know thee well enough, man. Why, in the name of all 
 glory and plunder, art thou not coming with us 1 They say 
 William has offered thee the earldom of Nortliumberland.' 
 
 ' He has not. And if he had, it is not his to give. And if it 
 were, it is by right neither mine, nor my nephews', but Wal- 
 theof Siwardsson's. Now hearken unto me ; and settle it in your 
 minds, thou and William both, that your quarrel is against none 
 but Harold and the Godwinssons, and their men of Wessex : 
 but that if you go to cross the Watling Street, and meddle with 
 the free Danes, who are none of Harold's men ' 
 
 ' iStay. Harold has large manors in Lincolnshire, and so has 
 Edith liis sister, and what of them, Sieur Hereward 1 ' 
 
 ' Tliat the man who touches them, even though the men on 
 them may fight on Harold's side, liad better have put his head 
 into a hornet's nest. Unjustly were they seized from their true 
 owners by Harold and his fathers ; and the holders of them 
 will owe no service to him a day longer than they can help : 
 but will, if he fall, demand an earl of their own race, or tight 
 to the death.' 
 
 ' Best make young Waltheof earl, tlien.' 
 
 ' Best keep thy foot out of them, and the foot of any man 
 for whom thou carest. Now good-bye. Friends we are, and 
 friends let us be.' 
 
 'Ah, that thou wert coming to England ! ' 
 
 ' I bide my time. Come I may, when I see fit. But whether 
 I come as friend or foe depends on that of which I have given 
 thee fair warning.' 
 
 So they parted for the time. 
 
 It will be seen hereafter, how Gilbert took his own advice 
 about young Waltheof : but did not take Hereward's advice 
 about the Lincoln manors. 
 
 In Baldwin's hall that day, Hereward met Dolfin ; and when 
 the magnificent young Scot sprang to him, embraced him, 
 bewailed his murdered boy, talked over old passages, compli- 
 mented him on his fame, lamented that he himself had won no 
 sucli honours in the field, Hereward felt much more inclined to 
 fight for liim than against him. 
 
 Presently the ladies entered from the bower adjoining tlie 
 liall. A buzz of expectation I'ose from all the knights, and 
 Alftruda's name was whispered round. 
 
 Slie came in ; and Hereward saw at the first glance tliat 
 Gilbert had for once in his life spoken truth. So beautiful a 
 damsel he had never beheld ; and as slie swept down toward 
 him, he for one moment forgot Torfrida, and stood spell-bound 
 like the rest.
 
 148 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 Her eye caught his. If his face showed recognition, hers 
 showed none. The remembrance of their early friendship, of 
 her deliverance from the monster, had plainly passed away. 
 
 'Fickle, ungrateful things, these women,' thought Hereward. 
 
 She passed him close. As she did so, she turned her head, 
 and looked him full in the face one moment, haughty and cold. 
 
 ' So you could not wait for me ? ' said she, in a quiet whisper, 
 and went on straight to Dollin, who stood trembling with ex- 
 pectation and delight. 
 
 She put her hand into his. 
 
 ' Here stands my champion,' said she. 
 
 ' Say, here kneels your slave,' cried the Scot, dropping to the 
 pavement a true Highland knee. Whereon forth twanged a 
 harp, and Dolfin's minstrel sang, in most melodious Gaelic — 
 
 ' Strong as a horse's hock, shaggy as a stag's brisket, 
 Is the knee of the young torrent-leaper, the pride of the house of 
 
 Crinan. 
 It bent not to Macbeth tlie accursed, it bends not even to Malcolm 
 
 the Anointed, 
 But it bends like a harebell — who shall blame it ? — before the breath 
 
 of beauty. ' 
 
 Which magnificent effusion being mterpi-eted by Hereward for 
 the instruction of the ladies, procui'ed for the red-headed bard 
 more than one handsome gift. 
 
 A sturdy voice arose out of the crowd. 
 
 'The lady, my lord marquis, and knights all, will need no 
 champion as far as I am concerned. When one sees so fair a 
 pair together, what can a knight say, in the name of all knight- 
 hood, but that the heavens have made them for each other, and 
 that it were sin and shame to sunder them ? ' 
 
 The voice was that of Gilbert of Ghent, who, making a 
 virtue of necessity, walked up to the pair, his weather-beaten 
 countenance wreathed into what were meant for paternal 
 smiles. 
 
 ' Why did you not say as much in Scotland, and save me all 
 this trouble ? ' pertinently asked the plain-spoken Scot. 
 
 'My lord prince, you owe me a debt for my caution. With- 
 out it, the fair lady had never known the whole fervency of 
 your love ; nor these noble knights and yourself the whole 
 evenness of Count Baldwin's justice.' 
 
 Alftruda turned her head away half contemptuously ; and 
 as she did so, she let her hand drop listlessly from Dolfin's 
 grasp, and drew back to the other ladies. 
 
 A suspicion crossed Hereward's mind. Did she really love 
 the prince 1 Did those strange words of hers mean that she 
 had not yet forgotten Hereward himself ? 
 
 However, he said to himself that it was no concern of his, as 
 it certainly was not : went home to Torfrida ; told her every-
 
 XVII NEWS FROM STANFORD BRIGG AND HASTINGS 149 
 
 thing that had happened ; laughed over it with her ; and then 
 forgot Alftruda, Dolfin, and Gilbert in the prospect of a gi-eat 
 campaign in Holland. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 HOW HEREWAED TOOK THE NEWS FROM STANFORD BRIGG 
 
 AND HASTINGS 
 
 After that, news came thick and fast. 
 
 News of all the fowl of heaven flocking to the feast of the 
 great God, that they might eat the flesh of kings, and captains, 
 and mighty men, and horses, and them that sit on them, and 
 the flesh of all men, both bond and free. 
 
 News true, news half true, news false. News from Rome, 
 how England, when conquered, was to be held as a fief of St. 
 Peter, and spiritually, as well as temporally, enslaved. News 
 how the Gonfanon of St. Peter, and a ring with a bit of St. 
 Peter himself enclosed therein, had come to Rouen, to go before 
 the Norman host as the ark went before tliat of Israel. 
 
 Then news from the North. How Tosti had been to Sweyn, 
 and bid him come back and win the country again, as Canute 
 liis uncle had done ; and how the cautious Dane had answered 
 that he was a much smaller man than Canute ; that he had 
 enough to hold his own against the Norsemen, and could not 
 afford to throw for such high stakes as his mighty uncle. 
 
 Then news how Tosti had been to Norway, to Harold Hard- 
 raade, and asked him why he had been fighting fifteen years for 
 Denmark, when England lay open to him. And how Harold of 
 Norway had agreed to come ; and how he had levied one-half of 
 the able-bodied men in Norway ; and how he was gathering a 
 mighty fleet at Solundir, in tlie mouth of the Sogne Fiord. Of 
 all this Hereward was well informed ; for Tosti came back 
 again to St. Omer and talked big. But Hereward and he had 
 no dealings with each other. But at last, when Tosti tried to 
 entice some of Hereward's men to sail with him, Hereward 
 sent him word that if he met him, he would kill him in the 
 streets. 
 
 Then Tosti, who (tliough he wanted not for courage) knew 
 that he was no match for Hereward, went off" to Bruges, leaving 
 his wife and family behind ; gatliered sixty shijis at Ostend ; 
 went off' to the Isle of Wight ; and forced the landsfolk to give 
 liim money and food. Then Harold of England's fleet, which 
 was watching the coast against the Normans, drove him away ; 
 and he sailed off" north, full of black rage against his brother 
 Harold and all Englishmen, and bui'ned, plundered, and mur- 
 dered, along tlie coast of Lincolnshire, out of brute si^ite to the 
 Danes who had exjDelled him.
 
 150 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 Then came news liow lie had got into the Humber ; how 
 Morcar and Edwin with the Northumbrians had driven him 
 out ; and how he had gone ofi' to Scotland to meet Harold of 
 Norway ; and how he had jout his hands between Harold's, and 
 become his man. 
 
 And all the while the Norman camp at St. Pierre-sur-Dive 
 grew and grew ; and all was ready, if the wind would but 
 change. 
 
 And so Hereward looked on, helpless, and saw these two 
 great storm-clouds growing — one from north, and one from 
 south — to burst upon his native land. 
 
 Two invasions at the same moment of time ; and these no 
 mere Viking raids for plunder, but deliberate attempts at con- 
 quest and colonisation, by the two most famous captains of the 
 age. What if both succeeded 1 What if the two storm-clouds 
 swept across England, each on its own path, and met in the 
 midst, to hurl their lightnings into each other ? A fight be- 
 tween William of Normandy and Harold of Norway, on some 
 mooi"land in Mercia — that would be a battle of giants ; a sight 
 at which Odin and the gods of Valhalla would rise from their 
 seats, and throw away the mead-horn, to stai-e down on the 
 deeds of heroes scarcely less mighty than themselves. Would 
 that neither might win ! Would that they would destroy and 
 devour, till there was none left of Frenchmen or of Norwegians ! 
 
 So sung Hereward, after his heathen fashion : and his house- 
 carles applauded the song. But Torfrida shuddered. 
 
 'And what will become of the poor English in the mean- 
 time?' 
 
 'They have brought it on themselves,' said Hereward 
 bitterly. ' Instead of giving tlie crown to the man who should 
 have had it — to Sweyn of Denmark — they let Godwin put it on 
 the head of a drivelling monk : and as they sowed, so will they 
 reap.' 
 
 But Hereward's own soul was black within him. To see 
 these mighty events passing, as it were, within reach of liis 
 hand — and he unable to take his share in them — For what 
 share could he take? That of Tosti Godwinsson against his 
 own nephews ? That of Harold Godwinsson, the usurper ? 
 That of the tanner's grandson against any man ? Ah, that he 
 had been in England ! Ah, that he had been where he might 
 have been, where he ought to have been, but for his own folly 
 — high in power in his native land ; perhaps a great earl ; per- 
 haps commander of all the armies of the Danelagh. And 
 bitterly he cursed his youthful sins, as he rode to and fro 
 almost daily to the port, asking for news, and getting often 
 only too much. 
 
 For now came news that the Norsemen liad landed in 
 Humber ; that Edwin and Morcar were beaten at York ; that 
 Hardraade and Tosti were masters of the North.
 
 XVII NEWS FROM STANFORD BRIGG AND HASTINGS 151 
 
 And with that, news that by the virtue of the relics of St. 
 Valeri, which had been brought out of their shrine to frighten 
 the demons of the storm, and by the intercession of the blessed 
 St. Michael, patron of Normandy, the winds had changed, and 
 William's whole armament had crossed the Channel, landed 
 upon an undefended shore, and fortified themselves at Pevensey 
 and Hastings. 
 
 And then followed a fortnight of silence and torturing 
 suspense. 
 
 Hereward could liardly eat, drink, sleep, or speak. He 
 answered Torfrida's consolations curtly and angrily, till she 
 betook herself to silent caresses, as to a sick animal. But she 
 loved him all the better for his suUenness ; for it showed that 
 his English heart was wakening again, sound and strong, 
 
 At last news came. He was down as usual at the port. A 
 ship had just come up the estuary. A man just landed stood on 
 tlie beach, gesticulating, and calling in an unknown tongue to 
 tlie bystanders, who laugiied at him, and seemed inclined to 
 misuse him. 
 
 Hereward galloped down the beach. 
 
 ' Out of the way, villains ! Why, man, you are a Norseman ! ' 
 
 'Norseman am I, jarl , Thord Gunlaugsson is my name; 
 and news I bring for the Countess Judith (as the French call 
 her) that shall turn her golden hair to snow : — yea, and all fair 
 lasses' hair from Lindesness to Lofibden.' 
 
 ' Is the earl dead 1 ' 
 
 ' And Harold Sigurdsson.' 
 
 Hereward sat sijent, appalled. For Tosti he cared not. _ But 
 Harold Sigurdsson, Harold Hardraade, Harold the Viking, 
 Harold the Varanger, Harold the Lionslayer, Harold of Con- 
 stantinople, the bravest among champions, the wisest among 
 kings, the cunningest among minstrels, the darling of the 
 Vikings of the north ; the one man whom Hereward had taken 
 for his pattern and his ideal, the one man under whose banner 
 lie would have been proud to fight — the earth seemed empty, if 
 Harold Hardraade were gone. 
 
 'Thord Gunlaug.sson,' cried he at last, ' or whatever be thy 
 name, if thou hast lied to me, I will draw thee with wild 
 horses.' 
 
 ' Would God that I did lie ! I saw him fall with an arrow 
 through his tliroat. Then Jarl Tosti took the Land-ravager and 
 held it up till he died. Then Eystein Orre took it, coming up 
 hot from the ships. And then he died likewise. Then they all 
 died. We would take no quarter. We threw off our mail, and 
 fought baresark, till all were dead together.' ^ 
 
 ' How earnest thou, then, hither ? ' 
 
 1 For the details of tlii.s battle, sec Snorro Stuileson ; or the admirable 
 description in Bulwer's Harold.
 
 152 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' Styi'kai" the marshal escaped in the night, and I with him, 
 and a few more. And Styrkar bade me bring the news to 
 Flanders, to the countess, while he took it to Olaf Haroldsson, 
 who lay off in the ships.' 
 
 ' And thou shalt take it. Martin ! get this man a horse. A 
 horse, ye villains, and a good one, on your lives ! ' 
 
 'AndTostiisdead?' 
 
 ' Dead like a hero. Harold oflered him quarter — offered him 
 liis earldom, they say : even in the midst of battle : but he 
 would not take it. He said he was the Sigurdsson's man now, 
 and true man he would be.'- 
 
 ' Harold offered him 1 — What art babbling at ? Who fought 
 you?' 
 
 ' Harold Godwinsson, the king.' 
 
 'Where?' 
 
 'At Stanford Brigg, by York town.' 
 
 ' Harold Godwinsson slew Harold Sigurdsson ? After this 
 wolves may eat lions ! ' 
 
 ' The Godwinsson is a gallant fighter and a wise general, or I 
 had not been here now.' 
 
 ' Get on thy horse, man ! ' said he, scornfully and impatiently, 
 ' and gallop, if thou canst.' 
 
 'I have ridden many a mile in Ireland, earl, and have not 
 forgotten my seat.' 
 
 ' Thou hast, hast thou ? ' said Martin ; ' thou art Tliord Gun- 
 laugsson of Waterford.' 
 
 ' That am I. How knowest thou me, man ? ' 
 
 'I am of Waterford. Thou hadst a slave lass, once, I think ; 
 Mew : they called lier ]\Iew, her skin it was so white.' 
 
 'What's that to thee?' asked Thord, turning on him 
 savagely. 
 
 ' I meant no harm. I saw her at Waterford when I was a 
 boy, and thought her a fair lass enough, that is all.' 
 
 And ]\Iartin dropped into the rear. 
 
 As tliey rode side by side, Hereward got more details of the 
 fight. 
 
 ' I knew it would fall out so. I foretold it ! ' said Thord. ' I 
 had a dream. I saw us come to English land, and fight ; and I 
 saw the banners floating. And before the English army was a 
 great witchwife, and rode upon a wolf, and he had a corpse in 
 his bloody jaws. And when he had eaten one up, she threw 
 him another, till he liad swallowed all.' 
 
 ' Did she throw liim thine 1 ' asked Martin, who ran holding 
 by the stirrup. 
 
 ' That did she, and eaten I saw myself. Yet here I am alive.' 
 
 'Tlien thy di^eams were naught.' 
 
 'I do not know that. The wolf may liave me yet.' 
 
 ' I fear thou art fey.' ^ 
 
 ^ Propliesyiiig liis own death ; literally 'fated.'
 
 XVII NEWS FROM STANFORD BRIGG AND HASTINGS 153 
 
 ' What the devil is that to thee if I be ?' 
 
 'Naught. But be comforted. I am a necromancer ; and this 
 I know by my art, that the weapon that will slay thee was 
 never forged in Flanders here.' 
 
 'There was another man had a dream,' said Thord, tui'ning 
 from Martin angrily. ' He was standing in the king's ship, and 
 he saw a great witchwife with a fork and a trough stand on the 
 island. Aiid he saw a fowl on every ship's stem, a raven, or else 
 an eagle ; and he heard the witchwife sing an evil song.' ^ 
 
 By this time they were in St. Omer. 
 
 Hereward rode straight to the Countess Judith's house. _ He 
 never had entered it yet ; and was likely to be attacked if he 
 entered it now. But when the door was opened, he thrust in 
 with so earnest and sad a face that the servants let him pass, 
 though not without growling and motions as of getting their 
 weapons. 
 
 ' I come in peace, my men, I come in peace : this is no time 
 for brawls. Where is the steward, or one of the countess' 
 ladies ? — Tell her, madam, that Hereward waits her commands, 
 and entreats her, in the name of St. Mary and all saints, to 
 vouchsafe him one word in private.' 
 
 The lady hurried into the bower. The next moment Judith 
 hurried out into the hall, her fair face blanched, her fair eyes 
 wide with terror. 
 
 Hereward fell on his knee. 
 
 ' What is this ? It must be bad news if you bring it.' 
 
 ' Madam, the grave covers all feuds. Earl Tosti was a very 
 valiant hero ; and would to God that we had been friends ! ' 
 
 She did not hear the end of the sentence : but fell back with 
 a shriek into the women's arms. 
 
 Hereward told them all that they needed to know of that 
 fratricidal strife ; and then to Thord Gunlaugsson — 
 
 ' Have you any token that this is true ? Mind what I warned 
 you, if you lied ! ' 
 
 'This have I, jarl and ladies,' and he drew from liis bosom a 
 reliquaiy. ' Ulf the marshal took this off the jarl's neck, and 
 bade me give it to none but his lady. Therefore, with your 
 pardon, sir jarl, I did not tell you that I had it, not knowing 
 whether you were an honest man.' 
 
 ' Thou hast done well ; and an honest man thou shalt find 
 me, though no jarl as yet. Come home, and I will feed thee 
 at my own table ; for I liave been a sea-rover and a Viking 
 myself.' 
 
 They left the reliquary with the ladies, and went. 
 
 ' See to this good man, jMartin.' 
 
 'That will I, as the apple of my eye.' 
 
 And Hereward went into Torfrida's room. 
 
 ' For these two dreams, see Siiorro Sturleson.
 
 154 HEREAVARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' I have news, news ! ' 
 
 'So have I.' 
 
 ' Harold Hardraade is slain, and Tosti too ! ' 
 
 'Where? how?' 
 
 ' Harold Godwinsson slew them by York.' 
 
 ' Brother has slain brother ? O God that died on cross ! ' 
 murmured Torf rida, ' when will men look to Thee, and have 
 mercy on their own souls ? But Hereward — I have news — news 
 more terrible by far. It came an hour ago. I have been dread- 
 ing your coming back.' 
 
 'Say on. If Harold Hardraade is dead, no worse can 
 happen.' 
 
 ' But Harold Godwinsson is dead ! ' 
 
 ' Dead ! _ Who next ? William of Normandy ? The world 
 seems coming to an end, as the monks say it will soon.' ^ 
 
 ' A great battle has been fought at a place they call Heath- 
 held.' 
 
 'Close by Hastings? Close to the landing-place? Harold 
 must have flown thither back from York. What a captain the 
 man is, after all ! ' 
 
 'Was. He is dead, and all the Godwinssons ; and England 
 lost.' 
 
 If Torfrida had feared the effect of her news, her heart was 
 lightened at once as Hereward answered haughtily — 
 
 ' England lost ? Sussex is not England, nor Wessex either, 
 any more than Harold was king thereof. England lost ? Let 
 the tanner try to cross the Watling Street, and he will find out 
 that he has another stamp of Englishman to deal with.' 
 
 'Hereward, Hereward, do not be unjust to the dead. Men 
 say — the Normans say — that they fought like heroes.' 
 
 'I never doubted that : but it makes me mad — as it does all 
 eastern and northern men — to hear these Wessex churls and 
 Godwinssons calling themselves all England.' 
 
 Torfrida shook her head. To her, as to most foreigners, 
 Wessex and the south-east counties were England ; the most 
 civilised ; the most French ; the seat of royalty ; having all the 
 prestige of law, and order, and wealth. And she was shrewd 
 enough to see, that as it was the part of England which had 
 most sympathy with French civilisation, it was the very part 
 Avhere the Frenchman could most easily gain and keep his liold. 
 The event proved that Torfrida was right : but all she said was, 
 ' It is dangerously near to France, at least.' 
 
 'It is that. I would sooner see 100,000 French north of the 
 Humber, than 10,000 in Kent and Sussex, where he can hurry 
 over supplies and men every week. It is the starting-point for 
 liim, if he means to conquer England piecemeal.' 
 
 ' And he does.' 
 
 1 There was a general rumour abroad that the end of the world was at 
 hand ; for the ' one thousand years ' of jirophecy had exphed.
 
 XVII NEWS FROM STANFORD BRIGG AND HASTINGS 155 
 
 ' And he shall not ! ' and Hereward started up, and walked to 
 and fro. 'If all the Godsvinssons be dead, there are Leofricssons 
 left, I trust, and 8iward's kin, and the Gospatrics in Northum- 
 bria. Ah ! Where were my nephews in the battle ? Not killed 
 too, I trust?' 
 
 ' They were not in the battle.' 
 
 ' Not with their new brother-in-law 1 Much he has gained by 
 throwing away the Swan-neck, like a base traitor as he was, and 
 marrying my pretty niece. But where were they ? ' 
 
 ' No man knows clearly. They followed him down as far as 
 London, and then lingered about the city, meaning no man can 
 tell wliat : but we shall hear — and, I fear, hear too much — before 
 a week is over.' 
 
 ' Heavens ! this is madness, indeed. This is the way to be 
 eaten up one by one. Neither to do the thing, nor leave it 
 alone. If I had been there ! If I had been there ' 
 
 ' You Avould have saved England, my hero ! ' and Torfrida 
 believed her own words. 
 
 ' I don't say that. Besides, I say that England is not lost. 
 But there were but two things to do : either to have sent to 
 William at once, and offered him the crown, if he would but 
 guarantee the Danish laws and liberties to all north of the 
 Watling Street ; and if he would, fall on the Godwinssons them- 
 selves, by fair means or foul, and send their heads to William.' 
 
 'Or what?' 
 
 ' Or have marched down after him, with every man they could 
 muster, and tlirown themselves on the Frenchman's flank in the 
 battle — or between him and the sea, cutting him ofT from Fivince 
 — or — Oh, that I had but been there, what things could I have 
 done ! — And now these two wretched boys have fooled away 
 their only chance ' 
 
 ' Some say that they hoped for the crown themselves.' 
 
 ' Which ? Not both ? Vain babies ! ' and Hereward laughed 
 bitterly. ' I suppose one will murder the other next, in order to 
 make himself the stronger by being the sole rival to the tanner. 
 The midden cock sole rival to the eagle ! Boy Waltheof will set 
 up his claim next, I presume, as Siward's son ; and then Gos- 
 patric, as Ethelred Evil-Counsel's great-grandson : and so fortli, 
 uikI so forth, till they all eat each other up, and the tanner's 
 grandson eats the last. What care I ? Tell me about the battle, 
 my lady, if you know aught. That is more to my way than 
 their statecraft.' 
 
 And Torfrida told him all she knew of the great figlit on 
 Heathfield Down, which men call Senlac, and the battle of 
 Hastings. And as slie told it, in her wild eloquent fashion, 
 Hereward's face reddened, and his eyes kindled. And when she 
 told of the last struggle round the Dragon ^ standard ; of Harold's 
 
 ' I have dared to differ from the excellent antlionties wlio say that the 
 standard was that of a Fighting Man, because tlic Bayeux Tapestry repre-
 
 156 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 mighty figure in the front of all, hewing with his great double- 
 headed axe, and then rolling in gore and agony, an arrow in his 
 eyeball ; of the last rally of tlie men of Kent ; of Gurth, the last 
 defender of the standard, falling by William's sword ; of the 
 standard hurled to the ground, and the popish Gonfanon planted 
 in its place — Then Hereward's eyes, for the first and last time 
 for many a year, were flushed with noble tears ; and springing 
 up, he cried, ' Honour to the Godwinssons ! Honour to the 
 southern men ! Honour to all true English hearts ! Why was 
 I not there, to go with them to Valhalla 1 ' 
 
 Torfrida caught him round the neck. ' Because you are here, 
 my hero, to free your country from her tyrants, and win yourself 
 immortal fame.' 
 
 ' Fool that I am, I verily believe I am crying.' 
 
 ' Those tears,' said she, as she kissed them away, ' are more 
 precious to Torfrida than the spoils of a hundred fights, for they 
 tell me that Hereward still loves his country ; still honours 
 virtue, even in a foe.' 
 
 And thus Torfrida — whether from a woman's sentiment of 
 pity, or from a woman's instinctive abhorrence of villany and 
 wrong, had become there and then an Englishwoman of the 
 English, as she proved by strange deeds and sufferings for many 
 a year. 
 
 ' Where is that Norseman, ]\Iartin?' asked Hereward that night 
 ere he went to bed. ' I want to hear more of poor Hardraade.' 
 
 'You can't speak to him now, master. He is sound asleep 
 this two hours, and warm enough, I will warrant.' 
 
 'Where?' 
 
 ' In the great green bed with blue curtains, just above the 
 kitchen.' 
 
 ' What nonsense is this 1 ' 
 
 ' The bed where you and I shall lie some day ; and the 
 kitchen to which we shall be sent down to turn our own spits, 
 unless we mend our manners mightily.' 
 
 Hereward looked at the man. Madness glared unmistakably 
 in his eyes. 
 
 ' You have killed him ! ' 
 
 'And buried him, cheating the priests.' 
 
 ' Traitor ! ' cried Hereward, seizing him. 
 
 ' Take your hands off my throat, master. He was only my 
 father.' 
 
 Hereward stood shocked and puzzled. After all, the man 
 
 sents the last struggle as in front of a Dragon standard, whicli must be — 
 as is to be expected — the old standard of Wessex, the standard of English 
 royalty. That Haiold had also a Fighting Man standard, and that it 
 was sent by William to the pope, there is no reason to doubt. But if the 
 Bayeux Tapestry be correct, the fury of the fight for the standard Avould 
 be explained. It would be a fight for the very symbol of King Edward's 
 dynasty.
 
 xviii HOW EARL GODWIN'S WIDOW CAME TO ST. OMER 157 
 
 was No-man's-tnan, and would not be missed ; and Martin Light- 
 foot, letting alone his madness, was as a third hand and foot to 
 him all day long. 
 
 So all he said was, ' I hope you have buried him well and 
 safely?' 
 
 ' You may walk your bloodhound over his grave to-morrow 
 without finding him.' 
 
 And where he lay. Here ward never knew. But from that 
 night Martin got a trick of stroking and patting his little axe, 
 and talking to it as if it had been alive. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 HOW EARL Godwin's widow came to st. omer 
 
 It would be vain to attempt even a sketch of the reports which 
 came to Flanders from England during the next two years ; or 
 of the conversations which ensued thereon between Baldwin and 
 his courtiers, and between Hereward and Torfrida. Two reports 
 out of three were doubtless false ; and two conversations out of 
 three founded on those false reports. 
 
 It is best, therefore, to interruj^t the thread of the story by 
 some small sketch of the state of England after the battle of 
 Hastings, that so we may at least guess at the tenor of Here- 
 ward and Torfrida's counsels. 
 
 William had, as yet, conquered little more than the south of 
 England : hardly, indeed, all that ; for Herefordshire, Worcester- 
 shire, and the neighbouring parts, which had belonged to Sweyn, 
 Harold's brother, were still insecure ; and the noble old city of 
 Exeter, confident in her Roman walls, did not yield till two 
 years after, in a.d. 1068. 
 
 North of his conquered territory, Mercia stretched almost 
 across England, from Chester to the Wash, governed by Edwin 
 and Morcar. Edwin called himself Earl of Mercia, and held the 
 Danish burghs. On the extreme north-west, the Roman city of 
 Chester was his ; while on the extreme south-east (as Domesday- 
 book testifies), Morcar still held large lands round Bourne and 
 throughout the south of Lincolnsliire, besides calling himself the 
 Earl of Nortliuiubria. Tlie young men seemed the darlings of 
 the half Danish Northmen. Chester, Coventry, Derby, "Not- 
 tingham, Leicester, Stamford, a chain of fortified towns sti-etch- 
 ing across England, were at tlieir command ; Blethyn, prince of 
 North Wales, was their nephew. 
 
 Northumbria, likewi.se, was not yet in AVilliam's hands. In- 
 deed it was in no man's hands, since the free Danes north of the 
 Humber had expelled Tosti, putting Morcar in his place. 
 Morcar, instead of residing in his earldom of Northumbria, had 
 made one Oswulf his deputy : but he had rivals enough.
 
 158 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 There was Gospati-ic, claiming through liis grandfather 
 Uchtred, and strong in the protection of his cousin Malcolm, 
 King of Scotland ; there was young Waltheof, ' the forest thief,' 
 — or rather, perhaps, 'the thief of slaughter,' who had been 
 born to Si ward Biorn in his old age, just after the battle of 
 Dunsinane ; a tine and gallant young man, destined to a swift 
 and sad end. 
 
 William sent to the Northumbrians one Copsi, a thane of 
 mark and worth, as his procurator, to expel Oswulf. Oswulf 
 and the land folk answered by killing Copsi, and doing every 
 man that vvliich was right in his own eyes. 
 
 William determined to propitiate the young eai'ls. Perhaps 
 he intended to govern the centre and north of England through 
 them, as feudal vassals ; and hoped meanwhile to pay his Nor- 
 man conquerors sufficiently out of the forfeited lands of Harold, 
 and those who had fought by his side at Hastings. It was not 
 his policy to make himself, much less to call himself, the conqueror 
 of England. He claimed to be its legitimate sovereign, deriv- 
 ing from his cousin Edward the Confessor ; and whosoever would 
 acknowledge him as such, had neither right nor cause to fear. 
 Tlierefore he sent for tlie young eai'ls. He courted Waltheof, 
 and more, really loved him. He promised Edwin his daughter 
 in marriage. Some say it was Constance, afterwards married 
 to Alan Fergant, of Brittany : but it may also have been the 
 beautiful Adelaide, who, none knew why, early gave up the 
 world, and died in a convent. Be that as it may, the two young 
 people saw each, and loved each other at Ilouen, whither 
 William took Waltheof, Edwin, and his brother ; as honoured 
 guests in name ; in reality as hostages likewise. 
 
 With the same rational and prudent policy, William respected 
 the fallen royal families, both of Harold and of Edward ; at 
 least, he warred not against women ; and the wealth a,nd influ- 
 ence of the great English ladies was enormous. Edith, sister 
 of Harold, and widow of the Confessor, lived in wealth and 
 honour at Winchester. Gyda, Harold's mother, retained Exeter 
 and her land. Aldytha,^ or Elfgiva, widow of Harold, lived rich 
 and safe in Chester. Godiva the countess owned, so anti- 
 quarians say, manors from Cheshire to Lincolnshire, which 
 would be now yearly worth the income of a great duke. 
 Agatha the Hungarian, widow of Edmund the outlaw, dwelt at 
 Romsey in Hampshire, under William's care. Her son Edgar 
 Etheling, the rightful heir of England, was treated by William 
 not only with courtesy, but with attection ; and allowed to 
 rebel, when he did rebel, with impunity. For the descendant 
 of Ptollo, the heathen Viking, had become a civilised chivalrous 
 Christian knight. His mighty forefather would have split the 
 Etheling's skull with his own axe. A Frank king would have 
 
 1 See her liistory, told, as none other can tell it, in Bnhver's Harold.
 
 XVIII HOW EARL GODWIN'S WIDOW CAME TO ST. O:\IER 159 
 
 shaved the young man's head, and immured him in a monastery. 
 An eastern sultan would have thrust out his eyes, or strangled 
 him at once. But William, however cruel, however unscrupu- 
 lous, had a knightly heart, and somewhat of a Christian con- 
 science ; and his conduct to his only lawful rival is a noble trait 
 amid many sins. 
 
 So far all went well, till William went back to France ; to be 
 likened, not as his ancestors, to the gods of Valhalla, or the 
 barbarous and destroying Vikings of mythic ages, but to 
 Csesar, Pompey, Vespasian, and civilised and civilising heroes 
 of classic Rome. 
 
 But while he sat at the Easter Feast at Fecamp, displaying 
 to Franks, Flemings, and Bretons, as well as to his own Nor- 
 mans, the treasures of Edward's palace at Westminster, and 
 ' more English wealth than could be found in the whole estate 
 of Gaul' ; while he sat there in his glory, with his young dupes, 
 Edwin, Morcar, and Waltheof, by his side ; having sent Harold's 
 banner in triumph to the pojDe, as a token that he had con- 
 quered the Church as well as the nation of England ; and 
 having founded abbeys as thank - ofierings to Him who had 
 seemed to prosper him in his great crime : at that very hour 
 the hand-writing was on the wall, unseen by man ; and he, 
 and his policy, and his race, were weighed in the balance, and 
 found wanting. 
 
 For now broke out in England that wrong -doing wliich 
 endured as long as she was a mere appanage and foreign farm 
 of Norman kings, whose hearts and homes were across the seas 
 in France. Fitz-Osbern, and Odo the warrior-prelate, William's 
 lialf- brother, had been left as his regents in England. Little do 
 they seem to have cared for William's promise to the English 
 people that they were to be ruled still by the laws of Edward 
 the Confessor, and tliat where a grant of land was made to a 
 Norman he was to hold it as the Englishman had done before 
 him, with no heavier burdens on himself, but with no heavier 
 burdens on the poor folk who tilled the land for him. Oppres- 
 sion began, lawlessness, and violence ; men were ill-treated on 
 the highways ; and women — what was worse- — in their own 
 homes ; and the regents abetted the ill-doers. ' It seems,' says 
 a most impartial liistorian,^ ' as if the Normans, released from 
 all authority, all restraint, all fear of retaliation, determined 
 to reduce the English nation to servitude, and drive them to 
 despair.' 
 
 In the latter attempt they succeeded but too soon ; in the 
 former, they succeeded at last : but tiiey paid dearly for their 
 success. 
 
 Hot young Englishmen began to emigrate. Some went to 
 the court of Constantinople, to join the Varanger guard, and 
 
 ' The late Sir F. Palgrave.
 
 160 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 have tlieir chance of a Polotaswarf like Harold Hardraade. 
 Some went to Scotland to Malcolm Cannioi^e, and brooded over 
 return and revenge. But Harold's sons went to their father's 
 cousin, Ulfsson of Denmark, and called on him to come and re- 
 conquer England in the name of his uncle Canute the Great ; 
 and man.y an Englishman went with them. 
 
 These things Gospatric watched, as earl (so far as he could 
 make any one obey him in the utter subversion of all order) of 
 the lands between Forth and Tyne. And he determined to 
 flee, ere evil befell him, to his cousin Malcolm Canmore, taking 
 with him Mai"lesweyn of Lincolnshire, who had fought, it is 
 said, by Harold's side at Hastings, and young Waltheof of 
 York. But, moreover, having a head, and being indeed, as his 
 final success showed, a man of ability and courage, he deter- 
 mined on a stroke of policy, wliich had incalculable after-effects 
 on the history of Scotland. He persuaded Agatha the Hun- 
 garian, Margaret and Christina her daughters, and Edgar the 
 Etheling himself, to flee with him to Scotland. How he con- 
 trived to send them messages to Romsey, far south in Hamp- 
 shire ; how tliey contrived to escape to the Humber, and 
 thence up to the Forth ; this is a romance in itself, of which tlie 
 chroniclers have left hardly a hint. But the thing was done ; 
 and at St. Margaret's Hope, as tradition tells, tlie Scottish 
 king met, and claimed as his unwilling bride, that fair and holy 
 maiden who was destined to soften his fierce passions, to civilise 
 and purify his people, and to become — if all had their just dues 
 — the true patron saint of Scotland. 
 
 Malcolm Canmore promised a mighty army; Sweyn a mighty 
 fleet. And meanwhile, Eustace of Boulogne, tlie Confessor's 
 brother-in-law, himself a Norman, rebelled at the head of the 
 down-trodden men of Kent ; and the Welshmen were harry- 
 ing Herefordshire with fire and sword, in revenge for Norman 
 ravages. 
 
 But as yet the storm did not burst. William returned, and 
 with him something like order. He conquered Exeter ; he de- 
 stroyed churches and towns to make his New Forest. He 
 brought over his Queen Matilda with pomp and great glory ; 
 and with her, the Bayeux Tapestry which she had wrought with 
 her own hands ; and meanwhile Sweyn Ulfsson was too busy 
 threatening Olaf Haroldsson, the new King of Norway, to sail 
 for England ; and the sons of King Harold of England had 
 to seek help from the Irish Danes ; and, ravaging the country 
 round Bristol, be beaten off" by the valiant burghers with 
 heavy loss. 
 
 So the storm did not burst ; and need not have burst, it may 
 be, at all, had William kept his plighted word. But he would 
 not give his fair daughter to Edwin. His Norman nobles, 
 doubtless, looked upon such an alliance as debasing to a civil- 
 ised lady. In their eyes, the Englishman was a iDai-barian ;
 
 XVIII HOW EARL GODWIN'S WIDOW CAME TO ST. OMER 161 
 
 and though tlie Norman might well marry the Englishwoman, 
 if she had beauty or wealth, it was a dangerous precedent to 
 allow the Englishman to marry the Norman woman, and that 
 woman a princess. Besides, there were those who coveted 
 Edwin's broad lands ; Roger de ]\Iontgomery, who already (it 
 is probable) held part of them as Earl of Shrewsbury, liad no 
 wish to see Edwin the son-in-law of his sovereign. Be the 
 cause what it may, William faltered, and i-efused ; and Edwin 
 and Morcar left the court of Westminster in wrath. Waltheof 
 followed them, having discovered — what he was weak enough 
 continually to forget again — the treachery of the Norman. The 
 young earls went off— one midlandward, one northward. The 
 people saw their wrongs in those of their earls, and the rebel- 
 lion burst forth at once ; the Welsli under Blethyn, and the 
 Cumbrians under Malcolm and Donaldbain, giving their help 
 in the struggle. 
 
 It was the year 1069 ; a more evil year for England than even 
 the year of Hastings. 
 
 The rebellion was crushed in a few months. The great 
 general marched steadily north, taking the boroughs one by 
 one, storming, burning, sometimes, whole towns, massacring or 
 mutilating young and old, and leaving, as he went on, a new 
 portent, a Norman donjon — till then all but unseen in England 
 — as a place of safety for liis garrisons. At Oxford (sacked 
 horribly, and all but destroyed), at Warwick (destroyed utterly), 
 at Nottingham, at Stafford, at Shrewsbury, at Cambridge, on 
 the huge barrow whicli overliangs tlie fen ; and at York itself, 
 which had opened its gates, trembling, to the great Norman 
 strategist — at eacli doomed borough rose a castle, with its tall 
 square tower witliin, its bailey around, and all the appliances 
 of that ancient Iloman science of fortification, of which the 
 Danes, as well as the Saxons, knew nothing. Their struggle 
 had only helped to tighten their bonds ; and what wonder ? 
 There was among them neither unity, nor plan, nor governing 
 mind and will. Hereward's words had come true. The only 
 man, save Gospatric, who had a head in England, was Harold 
 Godwinsson : and he lay in Waltham Abbey, wliile the monks 
 sang masses for liis soul. 
 
 Edwin, IMorcar, and Waltheof trembled before a genius 
 superior to their own— a genius, indeed, which had not its 
 equal in Christendom. They came in, and begged grace of the 
 king. They got it. But Edwin's earldom was forfeited, and he 
 and his brotlier became, from thenceforth, desperate men. 
 
 IMalcolm of Scotland trenil)led likewise, and asked for peace. 
 The clans, it is said, rejoiced thereat, having no wish for a war 
 which could buy tlicm neitlier spoil nor land. Malcolm sent 
 aml)assadors to William, and took (at least for his Cumbrian 
 lands on this side the border) that oatli of fealty to tlie 'Basi- 
 leus of Britain,' which more than one Scottish king and kinglet 
 M II. r. \v.
 
 162 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 had taken before — with the secret proviso (which, during the 
 middle ages, seems to have been thoroughly understood in 
 such cases by both parties), that he should be William's man 
 just as long as William could compel him to be so, and no longer. 
 
 Then came cruel and unjust confiscations. Ednoth the 
 standard-bearer had fallen at Bristol, fighting for William 
 against the Haroldssons : yet all his lands were givenaway to 
 Normans. Edwin and Morcar's lands were parted likewise ; 
 and — to specify cases which bear especially on the history of 
 Hereward — Oger the Briton got many of Morcar's manors 
 round Bourne, and Gilbert of Ghent many belonging to Marle- 
 sweyn about Lincoln city. And so did that valiant and crafty 
 knight find his legs once more on other men's ground, and re- 
 appears in monkish story as the most devout and pious earl, 
 Gilbert of Ghent.' 
 
 What followed, Hereward must have heard not from_ flying 
 rumours ; but from one who had seen, and known, and judged 
 ofall.i 
 
 For one day, about this time, Hereward was riding out of the 
 gate of St. Omer, when the porter appealed to him. Begging 
 for admittance were some twenty women, and a clerk or two ; 
 and they must needs see the chatelain. The chatelain was 
 away. What should he do ? 
 
 Hereward looked at the party, and saw, to his surprise, that 
 they were Englishwomen ; and that two of them were women 
 of rank, to judge from the rich materials of their travel-stained 
 and tattered garments. The ladies rode on sorry country gar- 
 rons, plainly hired from the peasants who drove them. The 
 rest of the women had walked ; and weary and footsore enough 
 they were. 
 
 ' You are surely Englishwomen ? ' asked he of the foremost as 
 he lifted his cap. 
 
 The lady bowed assent, beneath a heavy veil._ 
 
 'Then you are my guests. Let them pass in.' And Here- 
 ward threw himself off" his horse, and took the lady's bridle. 
 
 ' Stay,' she said, with an accent half Wessex, half Danish. ' I 
 seek the Countess Judith, if it will please you to tell me where 
 she lives.' 
 
 ' The Countess Judith, lady, is no longer in St. Omer. ^ Since 
 her husband's death, she lives with her mother at Bruges.' 
 
 The lady made a gestui^e of disappointment. 
 
 ' It were best for you, therefore, to accept my hospitality, till 
 such time as I can send you and your ladies on to Bruges.' 
 
 ' I must first know who it is who oflers me hospitality.' 
 
 This was said so proudly, that Hereward answered proudly 
 enough in return — 
 
 ' I am Hereward Leof ricsson, whom his foes call Hereward 
 
 1 Far Gyda's coming to St. Omer that year, see Ordcricus Vitalis.
 
 XVIII HOW EARL GODWIN'S WIDOW CAME TO ST. OMER 163 
 
 the outlaw ; and his friends, Hereward the master of 
 knights.' 
 
 She started, and threw her veil back, looking intently at him. 
 He, for his part, gave but one glance : and tlien cried — 
 
 ' Mother of heaven ! You are the great countess ! ' 
 
 ' Yes, I was that woman once, if all be not a dream. I am 
 now I know not what, seeking hospitality — if I can believe my 
 eyes and ears — of Godiva's son.' 
 
 ' And from Godiva's son you shall have it, as though you were 
 Godiva's self. God so deal with my mother, madam, as I will 
 deal with you.' 
 
 ' His father's wit, and his mother's beauty ! ' said the great 
 countess, looking upon him. ' Too, too like my own lost Harold ! ' 
 
 'Not so, my lady. I am a dwarf compared to him.' And 
 Hereward led the garron on by the bridle, keejDing his cap in hand, 
 while all wondered who the dame could be, before whom Here- 
 ward the champion would so abase himself. 
 
 ' Leofric's son does me too much honour. He has forgotten, 
 in his chivalry, that I am Godwin's widow.' 
 
 ' I have not forgotten that you are Sprakaleg's daughter, and 
 niece of Canute, king of kings.-^ Neither have I forgotten tliat 
 you are an English lady, in times in which all English folk are 
 one, and all old English feuds are wiped away.' 
 
 ' In English blood. All ! if these last words of yours were 
 true, as you, perhaps, might make them true, England might be 
 saved even yet.' , 
 
 'Saved?' 
 
 ' If there were one man in it, who cared for aught but him- 
 self.' 
 
 Hereward was silent and thoughtful. 
 
 He had sent Martin back to his house, to tell Torfrida to 
 prepare bath and food ; for the Countess Gyda, witli all her 
 train, was coming to be her guest. And when they entered the 
 court, Torfrida stood ready. 
 
 Is this your lady 1 ' asked Gyda, as Hereward lifted her from 
 her horse. 
 
 ' I am his lady and your servant,' said Torfrida, bowing. 
 
 'Child ! cliild ! liow not to me. Talk not of servants to a 
 wretched slave, who only longs to crawl into some hole and die, 
 forgetting all she was, and all she had.' 
 
 And the great countess reeled with weariness and woe, and 
 fell upon Torfrida's neck. 
 
 A tall veiled lady next her helped to support her ; and 
 between them they almost carried her through the hall, and into 
 Torfrida's best guest-chamber. 
 
 And there they gave her wine, and comforted her, and let her 
 weep awhile in peace. 
 
 The second lady liad unveiled licrself, displaying a beauty 
 ^ See note at end of this Chapter.
 
 164 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 wliich was still brilliant, in spite of sorrow, liunger, the stains 
 of travel, and moi'e than foi'ty years of life. 
 
 ' She must be Gunhilda,' guessed Torfrida to herself, and not 
 amiss. 
 
 She offered Gyda a bath, which she accepted eagerly, like a 
 true Dane. 
 
 ' I liave not washed for weeks. Not since we sat starving on 
 the Flat Holm there, in the Severn sea. I have become as foul 
 as my own fortunes ; and why not ? It is all of a piece. Why 
 should not beggars go unwashed 1 ' 
 
 But when Torfrida offered Gunhilda the bath, she declined. 
 
 ' I have done, lady, with such carnal vanities. What use in 
 cleaning the body which is itself unclean, and whitening the 
 outside of this sepulchre ? If I can but clean.se my soul tit for 
 my heavenly Bridegroom, the body may become — as it must at 
 last — food for worms.' 
 
 'She will needs enter religion, poor child,' said Gyda; 'and 
 Avhat wonder ? ' 
 
 ' I have chosen the better part, and it shall not be taken from 
 me.' 
 
 ' Taken ! Taken ! Hark to her. She means to mock me, 
 the proud nun, with that same " taken." ' 
 
 ' God forbid, mother ! ' 
 
 'Then why say taken, to me from whom all is taken? — Hus- 
 band, sons, wealth, land, renown, power;— power which I loved, 
 wretch that I was, as well as husband and as sons. Ah God ! 
 the girl is right. Better to rot in the convent than writhe in 
 the world. Better never to have had, than to have had and lost.' 
 
 ' Amen ! ' said Gunhilda. ' " Blessed are the barren, and they 
 that never gave suck," saith the Lord.' 
 
 ' No ! Not so ! ' cried Torfrida. ' Better, countess, to have 
 had and lost, than never to have had at all. The glutton was 
 right, swine as he was, when he said that not even heaven could 
 take from him the dinners he had eaten. How much more we, 
 if we say, not even heaven can take from us the love wherewith 
 we have loved 1 Will not our souls be richer thereby through 
 all eternity 1 ' 
 
 ' In purgatory ? ' asked Gunhilda. 
 
 'In purgatory, or where else you will. I love my love ; and 
 though my love ])rove false, he has been true ; though he 
 trample me under foot, he has held me in his bosom ; though he 
 kill me, he has lived for me. Better to have been his but for 
 one day, than never to have been his at all. What I have had 
 will still be mine, when that which I have shall fail me.' 
 
 'And you would buy short joy with lasting woe?' 
 
 ' That would I, like a brave man's child. I say — The present 
 is mine, and I will enjoy it as greedily as a child. Let the moi*- 
 row take thought for the things of itself.— Countess, your bath 
 is ready.'
 
 XVIII HOW EARL GODWIN'S WIDOW CAME TO ST. OMER 165 
 
 Nineteen years after, when the great conqueror lay, tossing 
 with agony and remorse, upon his dying bed, haunted by the 
 ghosts of his victims, the clerks of St. Saviour's in Bruges city 
 were putting up a leaden tablet (which remains, they say, unto 
 this very day) to the memory of one whose gentle soul had 
 gently passed away. ' Charitable to the poor, kind and agree- 
 able to lier attendants^, courteous to strangers, and only severe 
 to herself,' Gunhilda had lingered on in a world of war and 
 crime ; and had gone, it may be, to meet Torfrida beyond the 
 grave, and there finish their doubtful argument. 
 
 The countess was served with food in Toi-frida's chamber. 
 Hereward and his wife refused to sit, and waited on her 
 standing. 
 
 'I wish to show these saucy Fleming.?,' said he, 'that an 
 English princess is a princess still in the eyes of one more nobly 
 born than any of tliem.' 
 
 But after she had eaten, she made Torfrida sit before her on 
 the bed, and Hereward likewise ; and began to talk ; eagerly, as 
 one who had not unburdened her mind for many weeks ; and 
 eloquently too, as became Sprakaleg's daughter and Godwin's 
 wife. 
 
 She told them how she had fled from the storm of Exeter, 
 with a troop of women who dreaded the brutalities of the Nor- 
 mans.' How tliey had wandered up througli Devon, found 
 fishers' boats at Watchet in Somersetshire, and gone off to the 
 little desert island of the Flat Holm, in hopes of there meeting 
 with the Irish fleet which her sons, Edmund and Godwin, were 
 bringing against tlie West of England. How the fleet had never 
 come, and tliey had starved for many days ; and how she had 
 bribed a passing merchantman to take her and her wretched 
 train to the land of Baldwin the Debonnaire, who might have 
 pity on her for the sake of his daughter Judith, and Tosti her 
 husband, who died in his sins. 
 
 And at his name her tears began to flow afresh : fallen in his 
 overweening pride, — like Sweyn, like Harold, like herself 
 
 'The time was, when I would not weep. If I could, I would 
 not. For a year, lady, after Senlac, I sat like a stone. I 
 liardened my heart like a wall of Ijrass against God and man. 
 Then, there upon the Flat Holm, feeding on shell-fish, listening 
 to the wail of the sea-fowl, looking outside across the wan water 
 for the sails which never came, my heart broke down a moment. 
 And I heard a voice crying, " Tliere is no lielj) in man, go thou 
 to God." And I answered — That were a beggar's trick, to go to 
 God in need wlien I went not to Him in plenty. No. Without 
 God I planned, and without Him I must fail. Without Him I 
 went into the battle, and witliout Flim I must bide the brunt. 
 
 ^ To do William justice, he would not allow his iiieu to enter the city 
 while they were hloodhot ; and so prevented, as far as he could, the ex- 
 cesses which Gyda had feared.
 
 166 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 And at best — Can He give me back my sons ? And I hardened 
 my heart again like a stone, and shed no tear till I saw your fair 
 face this day.' 
 
 'And now,' she said, turning sharply on Hereward, 'what do 
 you do here 1 Do you not know that your nephews' lands are 
 parted between grooms from Angers and scullions from Nor- 
 mandy 1 ' 
 
 ' So much the worse for both them and the grooms.' 
 
 'Sirr 
 
 ' You forget, lady, that I am an outlaw.' 
 
 ' But do you not know that your mother's lands are seized 
 likewise V 
 
 ' She will take refuge with her grandsons, who are, as I hear, 
 again on good terms with their new master, showing thereby a 
 most laudable and Christian spirit of foi'giveness.' 
 
 'On good terms? Do you not know, then, that they are 
 figliting again, outlaws, and desperate at the Frenchman's 
 treachery ? Do you not know that they have been driven out 
 of York, after defending tlie city street by street, house by 
 house j Do you not know that there is not an old man nor ;a 
 child in arms left in York ; and that your nephews, and the few 
 figliting men who were left, went down the Humber in boats, 
 and north to Scotland, to Gospatric and Waltheof 1 Do you not 
 know that your mother is left alone — at Bourne, or God knows 
 where — to endure at the hands of Norman rufiians what thou- 
 sands more endure ? ' 
 
 Hereward made no answei', but played with his dagger. 
 
 'And do you know that England is ready to burst into a 
 blaze,_ if there be one man wise enough to put the live coal into 
 the right place ? That Sweyn Ulffson my nephew, or Asbiorn 
 his brother, will surely land there within the year with a 
 mighty host ? And that if there be one man in England of wit 
 enough, and knowledge enough of war, to lead the armies of 
 
 England, the Frenchman may be driven into the sea is there 
 
 any here who understands English ? ' 
 
 ' None but ourselves.' 
 
 'And Canute's nephew sit on Canute's throne?' 
 
 Hereward still played with his dagger. 
 
 'Not the sons of Harold, then ? ' asked he after a 
 while. 
 
 ' Never ! I promise you that — I, Countess Gyda, their grand- 
 motlier.' 
 
 'Wliy promise me, of all men, O great lady ?' 
 
 ' Because — I will tell you after. But this I say, my curse on 
 the_ grandson of mine who shall try to seize that fatal crown, 
 which cost the life of my fairest, my noblest, my wisest, my 
 bravest ! ' 
 
 Hereward bowed liis head, as if consenting to the praise of 
 Harold. But he knew who s^ooke ; and he was thinking within
 
 XVIII HOW EARL GODWIN'S WIDOW CAME TO ST. OMER 167 
 
 himself : ' Her curse may be on liim who shall seize, and yet not 
 on him to whom it is given.' 
 
 ' All that they, young and unskilful lads, have a right to ask 
 is, their father's earldoms and their father's lands. Edwin and 
 Morcar would keep their earldoms as of right. It is a pity that 
 there is no lady of the house of Godwin, whom we could honour 
 by offering her to one of your nephews, in return for tlieir 
 nobleness in giving Aldytha to my Harold. But this foolish 
 girl here refuses to wed ' 
 
 'And is past forty,' thought Hereward to himself. 
 
 'However, some plan to join the families more closely to- 
 gether might be thought on One of the young earls might 
 marry Judith here. Waltheof would have Northumbria, in 
 right of his father, and ought to be well content — for although 
 she is somewhat older than he, she is joeerlessly beautiful — to 
 marry your niece Aldytha.' 
 
 ' And Gospatric ? ' 
 
 ' Gospatric,' she said, with a half -sneer, ' will be as sure, as he 
 is able, to get something worth having for himself out of any 
 medley. Let him have Scotch Northumbria, if he claim it. He 
 is more English than Dane : he will keep those northern English 
 more true to us.' 
 
 ' But what of Sweyn's gallant holders and housecarles, who 
 are to help to do this mighty deed ? ' 
 
 ' Senlac left gaps enough among the noblemen of the South, 
 which they can till up, in the place of the French scum who now 
 riot over Wessex. And if that should suffice, what higher 
 honour for me, or for my daughter the queen, than to devote 
 our lands to the heroes who have won them back for us ? ' 
 
 Hereward hoped inwardly that Gyda would be as good as 
 her word ; for her greedy grasp had gathered to itself, before 
 the battle of Hastings, no less than six -and -thirty thousand 
 acres of good English soil. 
 
 ' I have always heard,' said he, bowing, ' that if the Lady Gyda 
 had been born a man, England would have had another all- 
 seeing and all - daring statesman, and Earl Godwin a rival, 
 instead of a helpmate. Now I believe what I have heard.' 
 
 But Torfrida looked sadly at the countess. There was some- 
 thing pitiable in the sight of a woman ruined, bereaved, seem- 
 ingly hopeless, portioning out the very land from which she was 
 a fugitive • una])le to restrain the passion for intrigue which 
 had been tne toil and the bane of her sad and splendid life. 
 
 ' And now,' she went on, ' surely some kind saint brought me, 
 even on my hrst landing, to you of all living men.' 
 
 ' Doubtless the blessed St. Bertin, beneath Avhose shadow we 
 repose here in peace,' said Hereward somewhat drily. 
 
 ' I will go barefoot to his altar to-morrow, and offer my last 
 jewel,' said Gunliilda. 
 
 ' You,' said Gyda, without noticing her daughter, ' are above
 
 168 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap, 
 
 all men the man who is needed.' And she began praising Here- 
 ward's valour, liis fame, his eloquence, liis skill as a general and 
 engnieer ; and when he suggested, smiling, that he was an exile 
 and an outlaw, she insisted that he was all the fitter from that 
 very fact. He had no enemies among the nobles. He had been 
 mixed up in none of the civil wars and blood feuds of the last 
 fifteen years. He was known only as that which he was, the 
 ablest English captain of his day— the only man who could cope 
 with William, the only man whom all parties in England would 
 alike obey. 
 
 And so, with flattery as well as with truth, she persuaded, if 
 not Here ward, at least Torfrida, that he was the man destined 
 to free England once more ; and that an earldom— or anything 
 which he chose to ask— would be the sure reward of his assist- 
 ance. 
 
 Torfrida,' said Hereward that night, ' kiss me well ; for you 
 will not kiss me again for a while.' 
 
 'Whatr 
 
 ' I am going to England to-morrow.' 
 
 'Alone?' 
 
 ' Alone. I and Martin to spy out the land ; and a dozen or 
 so of housecarles to take care of the ship in harbour.' 
 
 ^ But you have promised to fight the Viscount of Pinkney.' 
 
 ' I will be back again in time for him. Not a word— I must 
 go to England, or go mad.' 
 
 ' But Countess Gyda ? Who will squire her to Bruges ? ' 
 
 ' You and the rest of my men. You must tell her all. She 
 has a woman's heart, and will understand. And tell Baldwin I 
 shall be back within the month, if I am alive on land or water.' 
 
 I Hereward, Hereward, the French will kill you ! ' 
 
 'Not while I have your armour on. Peace, little fool ! Are 
 you actually afraid for Hereward at last ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, heavens ! when am I not afraid for you 1 ' and she cried 
 herself to sleep upon his bosom. But she knew that it was the 
 right, and knightly, and Christian thing to do. 
 
 Two days after, a longship ran out of the Aa, and sailed 
 away north. 
 
 Note. — I give so much of the pedigree of the Countess Gyda as may 
 serve to explain lier connection with tlio Royal House of Denmark.
 
 XIX 
 
 HOW HE CLEARED BOURISTE OF FRENCHMEN 
 
 King HARALD Bluetooth. • 
 
 169 
 
 King SWEYN Forkbeard. 
 
 CANUTE the Great, 
 etc. 
 
 I I 
 
 EsTRiD — Earl Ulf. 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 Thyra, m. Styrbiorn. 
 
 I 
 Thorkill Sprakaleg. 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 Gyda — Earl Godwin. 
 
 I 
 
 K. SWEYN. BiORN, Asbiorn, 
 
 murdered by sacked 
 
 SwEYN GoDWiNSSON, his Cousin. Peterborough. 
 
 SWEYN 
 
 (Outlawed). 
 
 HAROLD, 
 
 m. Algitha, 
 d. of Algar. 
 
 I 
 
 Gyda, 
 
 m. WALDEMAR, 
 
 k. of Russia 
 
 (froin wliom derive, by 
 
 the Mother's side), 
 
 WALDEMAR L, 
 
 King of Denmark. 
 
 I 
 K. ERIC Glippinc. 
 
 The House of Oldenburg. 
 
 I 
 The House of Glucksburg. 
 
 I 
 
 Eadgitha, 
 
 m. Edward 
 
 tlie Confessor. 
 
 I I 
 
 Leofwin. Gyrth. 
 
 (Killed at Hastings.) 
 
 GUNHILDA. 
 
 (A Nun.) 
 
 TOSTIO. 
 
 m. Judith 
 of Flanders. 
 
 SCULO, 
 
 from whom derive 
 HAKON the Old, 
 
 etc. 
 Kings of Norway. 
 
 Katil Krok, 
 
 founded a noble 
 
 family in 
 
 Halogaland. 
 
 ALEXANDRA, PRINCESS OF WALES. 
 
 Langebek (in his Scriptores Rerum Danicarum) tries ingenious!}^ enough 
 to rationalise the mythic pedigree of Earl Siward Digre, by making the 
 Fairy Bear identical with Styrbiorn, Spratling his son with Thorkill 
 Sprakaleg, and Biorn Bearsson, father of Siward, a brother of Earl Ulf 
 and Countess Gyda. But if so, Ulf and Gyda would have been notoriously 
 of the House of the Bear, and famous, like Siward, for their pointed ears. 
 Besides, Siward would thus have been the nephew of Countess Gyda and 
 Earl Godwin, a fact which is mentioned by no chronicler, and which is in- 
 admissible on account of Siward's age. His pedigree is altogether mythical, 
 and best left in the fairyland whence it sprung. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 HOW HEEEWARD cleared BOURNE OF FRENCHMEN 
 
 It may have been well a week after, that Hereward came from 
 the direction of Bo.ston, with Martin runninp: at hi.s heels. 
 
 A.S Hereward rode along the summer wold the summer sun 
 sank low, till just before it went down he came to an island of 
 small enclosed tield.s, liigli l)anks, elm ti-ees, and a farm inside; 
 one of those mo.st ancient holdings of the Soutliern and Eastern 
 Counties, still to be distinguished, by their huge banks and dykes
 
 170 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 full of hedgerow timber, from the more modern corn-lands out- 
 side, which were in Hereward's time mostly common pasture- 
 land or rough fen. 
 
 ' This should be Azerdun,' said he ; ' and there inside, as I live, 
 stands Azer getting in his croj^s. But who has he with 
 him V 
 
 With tlie old man were some half-dozen men of his own rank ; 
 some helping the serfs with might and main ; one or two stand- 
 ing on the tojo of the banks, as if on the look-out; but all 
 armed cap-a-pie. 
 
 ' His friends are helping him to get them in,' quoth Martin, 
 ' for fear of the rascally Frenchmen. A pleasant and peaceable 
 country we have come back to.' 
 
 ' And a very strong fortress are they holding,' said Hereward, 
 'against either French horsemen or French arrows. How to 
 dislodge those six fellows without six times their number, I do 
 not see. It is well to recollect that.' 
 
 And so he did ; and turned to use again and again, in after 
 years, the strategic capabilities of an old-fashioned English 
 farm. 
 
 Hereward spurred his horse up to the nearest gate, and was 
 instantly confronted by a little fair-haired man, as broad as he 
 was tall, who heaved up a long twybill, or double axe, and bade 
 him, across the gate, go to a certain place. 
 
 'Little Winter, little Winter, my chuck, my darling, my mad 
 fellow, my brother-in-arms, my brother in robbery and murder, 
 are you grown so honest in your old age that you will not know 
 little Hereward the wolf's head 1 ' 
 
 ' Hereward ! ' shrieked the doughty little man. ' I took you 
 for an accursed Norman in those outlandish clothes ; ' and lift- 
 ing up no little voice, he shouted — 
 
 ' Hereward is back, and Martin Lightf oot at his heels ! ' 
 
 The gate was thrown open, and Hereward all but jDulled off 
 his horse. He was clapped on the back, turned round and 
 round, admired from head to foot, sliouted at by old companions 
 of his boyhood, nauglity young housecarles of his old troop, 
 now settled down into honest thriving yeomen, hard working 
 and hard fighting, who had heard again and again, with pride, 
 his doughty doings over sea. There was Winter, and Gwenoch, 
 and Gery, Hereward's cousin — ancestor, it may be, of the ancient 
 and honourable house of that name, and of those parts ; and 
 Duti and Outi, the two valiant twins ; and Ulfard the White, 
 and others, some of whose names, and those of their sons, still 
 stand in Domesday-book. 
 
 ' And what,' asked Hereward, after the first congratulations 
 were over, ' of my mother ? What of the folk at Bourne 1 ' 
 
 All looked each at the other, and were silent. 
 
 * You are too late, young lord,' said Azer. 
 
 'Too late?'
 
 XIX HOW HE CLEARED BOURNE OF FRENCHMEN 171 
 
 ' The Frenchman has given it to a man of Gilbert of Ghent's 
 — his butler, groom, cook, for aught I know.' 
 
 ' To Gilbert's man ? And my mother ? ' 
 
 'God help your mother, and your young brother too. She 
 fled to Bourne a while ago out of ShroiDsliire. All her lands in 
 tliose parts are given away to Frenchmen. Even Coventry 
 minster was not safe for her ; so hither she came : but even here 
 the French villains have found her out. Three days ago some 
 five-and-twenty French marched into the place.' 
 
 ' And you did not stop them 1 ' 
 
 'Young sii', who are we to stop an army? We have enough 
 to keep our own. Gilbert, let alone the villain Ivo of Spalding, 
 can send a hundred men down on us in four -and -twenty 
 hours.' 
 
 'Then I,' said Hereward in a voice of thunder, 'will find the 
 way to send two hundred down on liim ;' and turning his 
 horse from the gate, he rode away furiously towards Bourne. 
 
 He turned back as suddenly, and galloped into the field. 
 
 ' Lads ! old comrades ! will you stand by me if I need you ? 
 Will you follow The Wake, as hundreds have followed him 
 already, if he will only go before 1 ' 
 
 ' We will, we will.' 
 
 ' I shall be back ere morning. What you have to do, I will 
 tell you then.' 
 
 ' Stop and eat — but for a quarter of an hour.' 
 
 Then Hereward swore a great oath, by oak and ash and 
 thorn, that he would neither eat bread nor drink water while 
 there was a Norman left in Bourne. 
 
 ' A little ale, then, if no water,' said Azer. 
 
 Hereward laughed, and rode away. 
 
 'You will not go single-handed against all those ruffians?' 
 shouted the old man after liim. ' Saddle, lads, and go with liim, 
 some of you, for very shame's sake.' 
 
 But when they galloped after Hereward, he sent them back. 
 He did not know yet, he said, what he would do. Better that 
 they should gather their forces, and see what men they could 
 afford him, in case of open battle. And he rode swiftly on. 
 
 When he came within the lands of Bourne it was dark. 
 
 ' So much the better,' thought Hereward. ' I have no wish to 
 see the old place till I have somewhat cleaned it out.' 
 
 He rode slowly into the long street between the overhanging 
 gables, past the crossways, and along the Water-gang and the 
 high earth-banks of his ancient home. Above them he could see 
 the great hall, its narrow windows all ablaze with light. With 
 a bitter growl he turned back, trying to recollect a house where 
 he could safely lodge. Martin pointed one out. 
 
 'Old Viking Surturbrand, the housecarle, did live there ; and 
 maybe lives tliere still.' 
 
 .' We will try ; ' and Martin knocked at the door.
 
 172 HERE^yARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 Tlie wicket was opened, but not the dooi* ; and through the 
 wicket window a surly voice asked who was there. 
 
 'Who lives here?' 
 
 ' Pery, son of Surturbrand. Who art thou who askest 1 ' 
 
 ' An honest gentleman and his servant, looking for a night's 
 lodging.' _ 
 
 ' This is no place for honest folk. 
 
 ' As for that, we don't wish to be more honest than you would 
 have us ; but lodging we will pay for, freely and well.' 
 
 ' We want none of thy money ; ' and the wicket was shut. 
 
 IMartin pulled out his axe, and drove the panel in. 
 
 'What art doing? We shall rouse the town,' said Hereward. 
 
 'Let be ; these are no French, but honest English, who like 
 one all the better for a little horse-play.' 
 
 ' What didst do that for ? ' asked the surly voice again. ' Were 
 it not for those rascal Frenchmen up above, I would come out 
 and split thy skull for thee.' 
 
 ' If there be Frenchmen vip above,' said Martin, in a voice of 
 feigned terror, ' take us in for the love of tlie Virgin and all 
 saints, or murdered we shall be ere morning light.' 
 
 'Thou hast no call to stay in the town, man, unless thou 
 like.' 
 
 Hereward rode close to the wicket, and said in a low voice, 
 ' I am a nobleman of Flanders, good sir, and a sworn foe to all 
 French. My horse is weary, and cannot make a step forward ; 
 and if thou be a Cliristian man, thou wilt take me in and let me 
 go off safe ere morning light.' 
 
 'From Flanders !' And the man turned and seemed to con- 
 sult those within. At length the door was slowly opened, and 
 Pery appeared, his double axe over his shoulder. 
 
 ' If thou be from Flanders, come in in God's name ; but be 
 quick, ere those Frenchmen get wind of thee.' 
 
 Hereward went in. Five or six men were standing round the 
 long table, upon which they had just laid down their double 
 axes and javelins. More than one countenance Hereward 
 recognised at once. Over the peat fire sat a very old man, his 
 hands upon his knees, as he warmed his bare feet at the embers. 
 He started up at the noise, and Hereward saw at once that it 
 was old Surturbrand, and that he was blind. 
 
 ' Who is it ? Is Hereward come 1 ' asked he, with the dull 
 dreamy voice of age. 
 
 'Not Hereward, father,' said some one, 'but a knight from 
 Flanders.' 
 
 The old man dropped his head upon his breast again with a 
 querulous whine, while Hereward's heart beat high at hearing 
 his own name. At all events he was among friends ; and 
 api^roaching the table he unbuckled his sword and laid it down 
 among the other weapons. 'At least,' said he, 'I shall have no 
 need of thee as long as I am here among honest men.'
 
 XIX HOW HE CLEARED BOURNE OF FRENCHMEN 173 
 
 'What shall I do with my master's horse?' asked Martin. 
 ' He can't stand in the street to be stolen by drunken French 
 horseboys.' 
 
 ' Bring him in at the front door, and out at the back,' said 
 Pery. 'Fine times these, when a man dare not open his own 
 yard gate.' 
 
 ' You seem to be all besieged here,' said Hereward. ' How is 
 this?' 
 
 'Besieged we are,' said the man; and then, partly to turn 
 the subject off, ' Will it please you to eat, noble sir?' 
 
 Hereward declined ; he liad a vow, he said, not to eat or 
 drink but once a day, till he had fulfilled a quest whereon he 
 was bound. His hosts eyed him, not without some lingering- 
 suspicion, but still with admiration and respect. His splendid 
 armour and weapons, as well as the golden locks which fell far 
 below his shoulders, and conveniently hid a face which he did 
 not wish yet to have recognised, showed him to be a man of the 
 highest rank ; wliile the palm of his small hand, as hard and 
 bony as any woodman's, proclaimed him to be no novice of a 
 fighting man. The strong Flemish accent wliich both he and 
 Martin Lightfoot had assumed prevented the honest English- 
 men from piercing his disguise. They watched him, while he 
 in turn watched them, struck by their uneasy looks and sullen 
 silence. 
 
 ' We are a dull company,' said he after a while courteously 
 enough. ' We used to be told in Flanders that there were none 
 such stout drinkers and none such jolly singers as you gallant 
 men of the Danelagli liere.' 
 
 'Dull times make dull company,' said one, 'and no offence to 
 you, sir kniglit.' 
 
 'Are you such a stranger,' asked Pery, 'that you do not know 
 what has haiDpened in this town during the last three days?' 
 
 ' No good, I will warrant, if you have Frenchmen in it.' 
 
 ' Why was not Hereward here ? ' wailed the old man in the 
 corner. ' It never would have happened if he had been in the 
 town.' 
 
 ' What ? ' asked Hereward, trying to command himself. 
 
 'What has happened,' said Pery, 'makes a free Englishman's 
 blood l)oil to tell of. Here, sir knight, three days ago, comes 
 in this Frenclanan with some twenty ruflians of his own, and 
 more of one Taillebois', too, to see him safe ; says that this new 
 king, this base-born Frenchman, has given away all Earl 
 Morcar's lands, and that Bourne is liis ; kills a man or two ; 
 upsets the women ; gets drunk, ruffles and roysters ; breaks 
 into my lady's bower, calling her to give up her keys ; and when 
 she gives tliem, will have all her jewels too. She faces the 
 rogues like a brave princess ; and two of the hounds lay liold of 
 her, and say that she shall ride tlu'ougli Bourne as she rode 
 through Coventry. The boy Godwin — he that was the great
 
 174 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 earl's godson, our last Jiope, the last of our house— draws sword 
 on them ; and he, a boy of sixteen summers, kills them botli 
 out of hand. The rest set on him, cut his head off, and there it 
 sticks on the gable spike of the hall to this hour. And do you 
 ask, after that, why free Englishmen are dull company 1 ' 
 
 ' And our turn will come next,' growled some one. ' The turn 
 will go all round ; no man's life or land, wife or daughters, will 
 be safe soon for these accursed Frenchmen, unless, as the old 
 man says. Here ward comes back.' 
 
 Once again the old man wailed out of the chimney-corner : 
 'Why did they ever send Hereward away? I warned the good 
 earl, I warned my good lady, many a time, to let him sow his 
 wild oats and be done with them, or tliey might need him some 
 day when they could not find him. He was a lad ! He was a 
 lad ! ' and again he whined, and sank into silence. 
 
 Hereward heard all this dry-eyed, hardening his heart into a 
 great resolve. 
 
 ' This is a dark story,' said he calmly ; ' and it would behove 
 me as a gentleman to succour this distressed lady, did I but 
 know Iiow. Tell me what I can do now, and I will do it.' 
 
 ' Your health ! ' cried one. ' You speak like a true knight.' 
 
 ' And he looks the man to keep his word, I'll warrant him,' 
 spoke another. 
 
 ' He does,' said Pery, shaking his head : ' nevertheless, if any- 
 thing could have been done, sir, be sure we would have done it : 
 but all our armed men are scattered up and down the country, 
 eacli taking care, as is natural, of liis own cattle and his own 
 women. There are not ten men-at-arms in Bourne this night ; 
 and what is worse, sir, as you may guess, who seem to have 
 known war as well as I, there is no man to lead them.' 
 
 Here Hereward was on the point of saying, ' And what if I 
 led you?'— on the point, too, of discovering himself: but he 
 stopped short. 
 
 Was it fair to involve this little knot of gallant fellows in 
 what might be a hopeless struggle, and to have all Bourne 
 burned over their heads ere morning by the ruffian Frenchmen ? 
 ISTo; his mother's quarrel was his own private quarrel. He 
 would go alone and see the strength of the enemy ; and after 
 that, may be, he would raise the country on them : or — and 
 half a dozen plans suggested themselves to his crafty brain as 
 he sat brooding and scheming; then, as always, utterly self- 
 confident. 
 
 He was startled by a burst of noise outside — music, laughter, 
 and shouts. 
 
 'There,' said Pery bitterly, 'are those Frenchmen, dancing 
 and singing in the hall, with my Lord Godwin's head above 
 them ! ' And curses bitter and deep went round the room. 
 They sat sullen and silent it may be for an hour or more : only 
 moving when, at some fresh outbreak of revelry, the old man
 
 XIX HOW HE CLEARED BOURNE OF FRENCHMEN 175 
 
 started from his doze and asked if that was Hereward 
 coming. 
 
 ' And who is this Hereward of wliom you speak ? ' said Here- 
 ward at last. 
 
 ' We thought you might know him, sir knight, if you come 
 from Flanders, as you say you do,' said three or four voices in a 
 surprised and surly tone. 
 
 ' Certainly I know such a man ; if he be Hereward the wolf's 
 head, Hereward the outlaw, Hereward the Wake, as they call 
 him. And a good soldier he is, though he be not yet made a 
 knight ; and married, too, to a rich and fair lady. I served 
 under this Hereward a few months ago in the Zeeland war, and 
 know no man whom I would sooner follow.' 
 
 'Nor I either,' chimed in Martin Lightfoot from the other 
 end of the table. 
 
 ' Nor we,' cried all the men-at-arms at once, each vieing with 
 the other in extravagant stories of their hero's jDrowess, and in 
 asking the knight of Flanders whether they were true or not. 
 
 To avoid oti'ending them, Hereward was forced to confess to 
 a great many deeds which he had never done : but he was right 
 glad to find that his fame had reached his native place, and that 
 he could count on the men if he needed them. 
 
 ' But who is this Hereward,' said he, ' that he should have to 
 do with your town here ? ' 
 
 Half a dozen voices at once told him his own story. 
 
 'I always heard,' said he drily, 'that that gentleman was of 
 some very noble kin ; and I will surely tell him all that has 
 befallen here as soon as I return to Flanders.' 
 
 At last they grew sleepy. The men went out and brought in 
 bundles of sweet sedge, spread them against the wall, and pre- 
 pared to lie down, each with his weapon by his side. But when 
 they were lain down, Hereward beckoned to him Pery and 
 Martin Lightfoot, and went out into the back yard, under the 
 pretence of seeing to his horse. 
 
 'Pery Surturbrandsson,' said he, 'thou seemest to be an 
 honest man, as we in foreign parts hold all the Danelagh folk 
 to be. Now it is fixed in my mind to go up, and my servant 
 with me, to yon liall, and see what those French upstarts are 
 about. Wilt thou trust me to go, without my fleeing back here 
 if I am found out, or in any way bringing thee to harm by 
 mixing thee up in my private matters ? And wilt thou, if I do 
 not come back, keep for thine own the horse which is in thy 
 staljle, and give moreover this purse and this ring to thy lady, 
 if thou canst find means to see her face to face ; and say thus 
 to her — that he that sent that purse and ring may be found, if 
 he be alive, at St. Omer, or with Baldwin, Marquis of Flanders ; 
 and that if he be dead (as he is like enough to be, his trade 
 being nought but war) she will still find at St. Omer a home 
 and wealth and friends, till these evil times be overpast 1 '
 
 176 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 As Hereward hud spoken witli some slight emotion, he had 
 dropped unawares his assumed Flemish accent, and had spoken 
 in broad burly Lincolnshire ; and therefore it was that Pery, 
 wlio had been staring at him by tlie moonlight all the while, 
 said, when he was done, tremblingly — 
 
 'Either you are Hereward, or you are his double-gangei'. 
 You speak like Hereward, you look like Hereward. Just wliat 
 Hereward would be now, you are. You are, my lord, whom 
 men call Wake ; and you cannot deny it.' 
 
 'Pery, if thou knowest me, speak of me to no living soul, save 
 to thy lady my mother ; and let me and my serving -man go 
 free out of thy yard gate. If I ask thee before morning to open 
 it again to me, thou wilt know tliat there is not a Frenchman 
 left in the Hall of Bourne.' 
 
 Pery tlirew his arms round liim, and embraced him silently. 
 
 'Get me only,' said Hereward, 'some long woman's gear 
 and black mantle, if thou canst, to cover this bright armour of 
 mine.' 
 
 Pery went off in silence as one stunned ; brought the mantle ; 
 and let them out of the yard gate. In ten minutes more, the 
 two had waded tlie Water-gang, scrambled the dyke and its 
 palisade, and stood under the gable of the great hall. Not a 
 soul was stirring outside. The serfs were all cowering in their 
 huts like so many rabbits in their burrows, listening in fear to 
 the revelry of their new tyrants. The night was dark : but 
 not so dark that Hereward could not see between him and the 
 sky his brother's long locks floating in the breeze. 
 
 ' That I must have down, at least,' said he, in a low voice. 
 
 'Then liere is wherewithal,' said Martin Lightfoot, as he 
 stumbled over something. ' The drunken villains have left the 
 ladder in the yard.' 
 
 Hereward raised the ladder, took down the head, and wrapped 
 it in the cloak ; and ere he did so, he kissed the cold forehead. 
 How he had hated that boy ! Well, at least he had never wil- 
 fully harmed him— or the boy him either, for that matter. And 
 now he had died like a man, killing liis foe. He was of the true 
 old blood after all. And Hereward felt that he would have 
 given all that he had, save liis wife or his sword-hand, to have 
 that boy alive again, to pet him, and train him, and teach him 
 to fight at his side. 
 
 Then he slijoped round to one of the narrow unshuttered 
 windows and looked in. The hall was in a wasteful blaze of 
 light ; a wliole month's candles burning in one night. The 
 table was covered with all liis father's choicest plate ; the wine 
 was running waste upon tlie floor ; the men were lolling at the 
 table in every stage of drunkenness ; the loose women, camp- 
 followers, and suchlike, were almost as drunk as their masters ; 
 and at the table-head, most drunk of all, sat, in Earl Leofric's 
 seat, the new Lord of Bourne.
 
 XIX HOW HE CLEARED BOURNE OF FRENCHMEN 177 
 
 Herewarcl could scarce believ^e his eyes. He was none other 
 than Gilbert of Ghent's stout Flemish cook, whom he had seen 
 many a time in Scotland. Hereward turned from the window 
 in disgust : but looked again as he heard words which roused 
 his wrath still more. 
 
 For in the open space nearest tlie door stood a gleeman, a 
 dancing, harping, foul-mouthed fellow, wlio was showing off' 
 ape's tricks, jesting against the English short coats — a continual 
 source of insult among the long-robed French — and shuffling 
 about in mockeries of English dancing. At some particularly 
 coarse jest of his, the new Lord of Bourne burst into a roar of 
 admiration. 
 
 'Ask what thou wilt, fellow, and thou shalt have it. Thou 
 wilt find me a better master to thee than ever was Morcar, the 
 English barbarian.' 
 
 The scoundrel, say the old chroniclers, made a request con- 
 cerning Hereward's family wliich cannot be printed here. 
 
 Hereward ground his teeth. 'If thou livest till morning 
 light,' said he, ' I will not.' 
 
 The last brutality awoke some better feeling in one of the 
 girls — a large coarse Fleming, who sat by the new lord's side. 
 ' Fine words,' said she, scornfully enough, ' for the sweepings of 
 Norman and Flemish kennels. You forget that you left one of 
 this very Leofric's sons behind in Flanders, who would besom 
 you all out if he was here before the morning's dawn.' 
 
 ' Hereward?' cried the cook, striking her down with a drunken 
 blow ; ' the scoundrel who stole the money which the Frisians 
 sent to Count Baldwin, and gave it to his own troops ? We ai'e 
 safe enough from him at all events ; he dare not show his face 
 on this side the Alps, for fear of the gallows.' 
 
 Hereward had heard enough. He sli^^ped down from the 
 window to ^lartin, and led him round the house. 
 
 'Now then, down with the ladder quick, and dash in the 
 door. I go in : stay thou outside. If any man passes me, see 
 that he pass not tliee.' 
 
 Martin chuckled a ghostly laugh as he^elped the ladder down. 
 In another moment the door was burst in, and Hereward stood 
 upon the threshold. He gave one war-shout of — A Wake ! A 
 Wake ! and then rushed forward. As he passed the gleeman, he 
 gave him one stroke across the loins ; the wretch fell shrieking. 
 
 And then began a murder grim and great. They fought witli 
 ale-cups, with knives, with benches : but, drunken and unarmed, 
 tliey were liewn down like sheep. Fifteen Normans, says the 
 chronicler (wlio gives minute details of tlie whole scene), were 
 in tlie hall when Hereward burst in. When the sun rose there 
 were fff teen heads upon the gable. Escape had been impossible, 
 ^lartin had laid the ladder across the door ; and the few who 
 escaped the master's terrible sword stumbled over it, to be 
 brained by the man's not less terrible axe. 
 
 N H. T. w.
 
 178 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 Then Herewarcl took up liis brother's head, and went in to 
 his mother. 
 
 The women in the bower opened to him. They had seen all 
 that passed from the gallery above, which, as usual, hidden by 
 a curtain, enabled the women to watch unseen wliat passed in 
 the hall below. 
 
 The Lady Godiva sat crouched together, all but alone — for 
 her bower-maidens had fled or been carried off long since — upon 
 a low stool beside a long dark thing covered with a i)a\\. So 
 utterly crushed was she, that slie did not even lift up her head 
 as Hereward entered. 
 
 He placed his ghastly burden reverently beneath the pall, 
 and then went and knelt before his mother. 
 
 For a while neither spoke a word. Then the Lady Godiva 
 suddenly drew back her hood, and dropping on her knees, tlirew 
 her arms round Hereward's neck, and wejjt till she could weep 
 no more. 
 
 ' Blessed strong arms,' sobbed she at last, ' around me ! To 
 feel something left in the world to protect me ; something left 
 in the world which loves me.' 
 
 ' You forgive me, mother 1 ' 
 
 'You forgive me? It was I, I who was in fault- — I, who 
 should liave clierished you, ray strongest, my bravest, my noblest 
 — now my all.' 
 
 'No, it was all my fault ; and on my head is all this misery. 
 If I had been here, as I ought to have been, all this might have 
 never happened.' 
 
 ' You would only have been murdered too. No : thank God 
 you were away ; or God would have taken you with the rest. 
 His arm is bared against me, and His face turned away from 
 me. All in vain, in vain ! Vain to have washed my hands in 
 innocency, and worshipped Him niglit and day. Vain to have 
 builded minsters to His honour, and heaped the shrines of His 
 saints with gold. Vain to have fed the hungry, and clothed the 
 naked, and washed tlie feet of His poor, that I might atone for 
 my own sins, and tlie sins of my house. This is His answer. 
 He has taken me up, and dashed, me down : and nought is left, 
 but, like Job, to abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes — of, 
 I know not what — I know not what — I know not what — unless 
 it be that poor Algar held some Church lands ; I forget where 
 they are, now, tliough I warned him often of them. My brains 
 are broken, good saints. I forget— would that I could forget 
 more— and poor Morcar held them till this ruin. Is it that, 
 Hereward ? The fatlier takes God's lands ; tlie son will not 
 restore them : a dark crime — who shall atone for that ?— though 
 it is but a few acres — a few acres — after all •' 
 
 And so she sobbed on, like any child. 
 
 ' We will make them up, mother, we will make them up twice 
 over. But never say that God has deserted you. See, He has
 
 XIX HOW HE CLEARED BOURNE OF FRENCHMEN 179 
 
 sent you me ! ' said Hereward, wondering to find himself, of all 
 men on eai'th, preaching consolation. 
 
 ' Yes, I have you ! Hold me. Love me. Let me feel that 
 one thing loves me upon earth. I want love ; I must ha\e it : 
 and if God, and His mother, and all the saints refuse their love, 
 I must turn to the creature, and ask it to love me, but for a 
 day.' 
 
 ' For ever, mother.' 
 
 ' You will not leave me 1 ' 
 
 ' If I do. I come back, to finish what I have begun.' 
 
 ' More blood ? O God ! Hereward, not that ! Let us return 
 good for evil. Let us take up our crosses. Let us bear our sin. 
 Let us humble ourselves under God's hand, and flee into some 
 convent, and there die praying for our country and our kin.' 
 
 ' Men must watch while women pray. I will take you to a 
 minster — to Peterborough.' 
 
 ' No, not to Peterborough ' 
 
 'But my uncle Brand is abbot there, they tell me, now this 
 four years ; and that rogue Herluin prior in his place.' 
 
 ' Brand is dying : dying of a broken heart, like me. The 
 Frenchman lias given his abbey to one Thorold, the tyrant of 
 Malmesbury — a Frenchman like himself. No, take me where I 
 shall never see a French face. Take me to Crowland— and him 
 with me — where I shall see nought but English faces, and hear 
 English chants, and die a free Englishwoman under St. Guthlac's 
 wings.' 
 
 ' Ah ! ' said Hereward bitterly, ' St. Guthlac is a right 
 Englishman, and will have some sort of fellow-feeling for us ; 
 while St. Peter, of course, is somewhat too fond of Rome and 
 those Italian monks. Well — blood is thicker than water ; so I 
 hardly blame the blessed Apostle.' 
 ' Do not talk so, Hereward.' 
 
 ' Much the saints have done for us, mother, that we are to be 
 so very respectful to their higli mightinesses. I fear that, if 
 this Frenchman goes on with his plan of thrusting his monks 
 into our abbeys, I shall have to do more even for St. Guthlac, 
 than ever he did for me. Do not say more, mother. This night 
 lias made Hereward a new man. Now, prepare '—and slie knew 
 what he meant—' and gather all your treasures ; and we will 
 start for Crowland to-morrow afternoon.'
 
 180 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 HOW HEREWARD WAS MADE A KNIGHT AFTER THE FASHION 
 
 OF THE ENGLISH 
 
 A WILD night was that in Bourne. All the folk, free and unfree, 
 man and woman, were out on the streets, asking the meaning 
 of those terrible shrieks, followed by a more terrible silence. 
 
 At last Hereward strode down from the hall, his drawn sword 
 in his hand. 
 
 'Silence, good folks, and hearken to me, once and for all. 
 There is not a Frenchman left alive in Bourne. If you be the 
 men I take you for, there shall not be one left alive between 
 Wash and Huraber. Silence, again ! ' — as a herce cry of rage 
 and joy arose, and men rushed forward to take him by the hand, 
 women to embrace him. 'This is no time for compliments, 
 good folks, but for quick wit and quick blows. For the law we 
 tight, if we do figlit ; and by the law we must work, fight or 
 not. Where is the lawman of the town 1 ' 
 
 ' I was lawman last night, to see such law done as there is 
 left,' said Pery. ' But you are lawman now. Do as you will. 
 We will obey you.' 
 
 ' You shall be our lawman,' shouted many voices. 
 
 ' I ? Who am I ? Out of -law, and a wolf's head.'_ 
 
 ' We will put you back into your law, — we will give you your 
 lands in full busting.' 
 
 ' Never mind a husting on my behalf. Let us have a husting, 
 if we have one, for a better end and a bigger than that. Now, 
 men of Bourne, I have put the coal in the bush. Dare you blow 
 the fire till the forest is aflame from south to north 1 I have 
 fought a dozen of Frenchmen. Dare you fight Taillebois and 
 Gilbert of Ghent, with William Duke of Normandy at their back? 
 Or will you take me, liere as I stand, and give me up to them as 
 an outlaw and a robber, to feed the crows outside the gates of 
 Lincoln 1 Do it, if you will. It will be the wiser plan, my 
 friends. Give me up to be judged and hanged ; and so purge 
 yourselves of the villainous murder of Gilbert's cook — your late 
 lord and master.' 
 
 ' Lord and master ? We are free men ! ' sliouted the holders, 
 or yeomen gentlemen. 'We hold our lands from God and the 
 sun.' 
 
 ' You are our lord,' shouted the socmen, or tenants. ' Who 
 but you ? We will follow, if you will lead ! ' 
 
 ' Hereward is come home ! ' cried a feeble voice behind. ' Let 
 me come to him. Let me feel him.' 
 
 And tlirougli the crowd, supported by two ladies, tottered the 
 mighty form of Surturbrand the blind Viking.
 
 XX HOW HEREWARD WAS MADE A KNIGHT 181 
 
 ' Hereward is come,' cried he, as he folded his master's son in 
 his arms. ' Ahoi ! he is wet with blood ! Ahoi ! he smells of 
 blood ! Ahoi ! the ravens will grow fat now, for Hereward is 
 come home ! ' 
 
 Some would have led the old man away : but he thrust them 
 off fiercely. 
 
 ' Ahoi ! come wolf ! Ahoi ! come kite ! Ahoi ! come erne from 
 off the fen ! You followed us, and we fed you well, when 
 Swend Forkbeard brought us over the sea. Follow us now, 
 and we will feed you better still, with the mongrel Frenchers 
 who scoff at the tongue of their forefathers, and would rob their 
 nearest kinsman of land and lass. Ahoi ! Swend's men ! Ahoi ! 
 Canute's men ! Vikings' sons, sea-cocks' sons. Berserkers' sons 
 all ! Split up the war-arrow, and send it round : and the curse 
 of Odin on every man that will not pass it on ! A war-king to- 
 morrow, and Hildur's game next day, that the old Surturbrand 
 may fall like a free holder, axe in hand, and not die like a cow 
 in the straw which the Frenchman lias spared him.' 
 
 All men were silent, as the old Viking's voice, cracked and 
 feeble when he began, gathered strength from rage, till it rang 
 through the still night air like a trumpet blast. 
 
 ■The silence was broken by a long wild cry from the forest, 
 which made the women start, and catch their children closer to 
 them. It was the howl of a wolf. 
 
 ' Hark to the witch's horse ! Hark to the son of Fenris, how 
 he calls for meat ! Are ye your father's _ sons, ye men of 
 Bourne ? They never let the gray beast call in vain.' 
 
 Hereward saw his opportunity, and seized it. He well knew 
 that there were those in the crowd, as there must needs be in all 
 crowds, who wished themselves well out of the business ; who 
 shrank from the thought of facing the Norman barons, much 
 more tlie Norman king ; who were ready enough, had the tide of 
 ifeeling begun to ebb, to blame Hereward for rashness, even 
 though they might not have gone so far as to give him up to the 
 Normans ; who would have advised some sort of compromise, 
 pacifying half-measui'e, or otlier weak plan for escaping present 
 danger by future destruction. But three out of four there were 
 good men and true. The savage chant of tlie old barbarian 
 might have startled them somewhat, for they were tolerably 
 orthodox Christian folk. But tliere was sense, as well as 
 spirit, in his savageness ; and they growled applause as he 
 ceased. Hereward heard, and cried : 
 
 ' The Viking is right ! So speaks the spirit of our fathers ; 
 and we must .show ourselves their true sons. Send round the 
 war-arrow, and death to the man who does not pass it on ! 
 Better die bravely together than falter and part company, to be 
 hunted down one by one by men who will never forgive us as 
 long as we have an acre of land for them to seize. Pery, son of 
 Surturbrand, you are the lawman. Put it to the vote ! '
 
 182 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 'Send round tlie war-arrow,' shouted Pery liimself ; and if 
 there was a man or two wlio shrank from the proposal, they 
 found it prudent to shout as loudly as did the rest. 
 
 Ere the morning liglit, the war-arrow was split into four 
 splinters, and carried out to the four airts, through all Kes- 
 teven. If the splinter were put into the house-father's hand, 
 he must send it on at once to the next freeman's house. If he 
 were away, it was stuck into his house-door, or into his great 
 chair by the fireside, and woe to him if, on liis return, he sent 
 it not on likewise. All through Kesteven went that night the 
 arrow-splinters, and with them the whisper, ' The Wake is come 
 again ' ; till, before mid-day, there were fifty well-armed men in 
 the old camping-held outside the town, and Hereward har- 
 anguing them in words of fire. 
 
 A chill came over them, nevertheless, when he told them that 
 he must at once return to Flanders. 
 
 ' But it must be,' he said. He had promised his good lord and 
 sovereign, Baldwin of Flanders, and his word of lio'nour he must 
 keep. _ Two visits he must pay ere he went ; and then to sea. 
 But within the year, if he were alive on ground, he would return, 
 and witli him ships and men, it might be wath Sweyn and all 
 the power of Denmark. Only let them hold their own till the 
 Danes should come, and all would be well. So would they show 
 that they were free Englishmen, able to hold England against 
 Frenchmen and all strangers. And whenever he came back lie 
 would set a light to Toft, Manthorpe, and Witham-on-the-hill. 
 They were his own farms, or should have been ; and better they 
 should burn tlian Frenchmen hold them. They could be seen 
 far and wide over the Bruneswold and over all the fen ; and 
 then all men might know for sure that the Wake was come 
 again. 
 
 ' And nine-and-forty of them,' says the chronicler, ' he chose 
 to guard Bourne ' (seemingly the lands which had been his 
 nephew Morcar's) till he should come back and take them for 
 himself. His own lands of Witham, Toft, and Manthorpe, Gery 
 his cousin should hold till his return ; and they should send 
 what they could off" them to Lady Godiva at Crowland. 
 
 Then they went down to the water and took barge, and laid 
 the corpse therein ; and Godiva and Hereward sat at the dead 
 lad's head ; and Winter steered the boat and Gwenoch took the 
 stroke-oar. 
 
 And they rowed away for Crowland, by many a mere and 
 many an ea ; through narrow reaches of clear brown glassy 
 water ; between the dark-green alders ; between the pale-green 
 reeds ; where the coot clanked, and the bittern boomed, and the 
 sedge-bird, not content with its own sweet song, mocked the 
 notes of all the birds around ; and then out into the broad 
 lagoons, where hung motionless, high over head, hawk beyond 
 hawk, buzzard beyond Ijuzzard, kite beyond kite, as far as eye
 
 XX HOW HEREWARD WAS MADE A KNIGHT 183 
 
 could see. Into the air, as they rowed on, whirred up great 
 skeins of wild fowl innumerable, with a cry as of all the bells of 
 Crowland, or all tlie hounds of the Bruneswold ; while clear 
 above all their noise sounded the wild wliistle of the curlews, 
 and the trumpet note of the great white swan. Out of the 
 reeds, like an arrow, shot the peregrine, singled one luckless 
 mallard from the flock, caught him up, struck him stone dead 
 with one blow of his terrible heel, and swept his prey with him 
 into the reeds again. 
 
 ' Death ! death ! death ! ' said Lady Godiva, as the feathers 
 fluttered down into the boat and rested on the dead boy's pall. 
 ' War among man and beast ; war on earth ; war in air ; war in 
 the water beneath ' as a great pike rolled at his bait, sending a 
 shoal of white tish flying along the surface. ' And war, says 
 Iioly writ, in heaven above. O Thou who didst die to destroy 
 death, when will it all be over ? ' 
 
 And thus they glided on from stream to stream, until they 
 came to the sacred isle of ' the inheritance of the Lord, the soil 
 of St. ^Nlary and St. Bartliolomew ; the most holy sanctuary of 
 St. Guthlac and his monks ; the minster most free from worldly 
 servitude ; the si:)ecial almshouse of tlie most illustrious kings ; 
 the sole place of refuge for any one in all tribulations ; the 
 perpetual abode of the saints ; the possession of religious 
 men, especially set apart by the Common Council of the king- 
 dom ; by reason of the frequent miracles of the most holy 
 Confessor, an ever-fruitful mother of camphire in the vineyards 
 of Engedi ; and by reason of the privileges granted by the 
 kings, a city of grace and safety to all who repent.' 
 
 As they drew near, they passed every minute some fisher's 
 log canoe, in which worked with net or line the criminal who 
 had saved his life by fleeing to St. Guthlac, and becoming liis 
 man forthwith ; the slave who had fled from his master's cruelty ; 
 and here and there in those evil days, the master who had fled 
 from the cruelty of Frenchmen, who would liave done to him as 
 he had done to others. But there all old grudges were put 
 away. They had sought the peace of St. Guthlac ; and there- 
 fore they must keep his peace ; and get their living from the 
 fish of the five rivers, within tlie bounds whereof was peace, 
 as of their own quiet streams ; for the abbot and St. Guthlac 
 were the only lords thereof, and neither summoner nor sheriff 
 of the king, nor armed force of knight or earl, could enter 
 there. 
 
 At last they came to Crowland minster : a vast range of 
 high-peaked buildings, founded on piles of oak and alder driven 
 into tlie fen — itself built almost entirely of timber from the 
 Bruneswold; barns, granaries, stables, workshops, stranger's 
 hall, fit for the boundless hospitality of Crowland ; infirmary, 
 refectory, dormitory, libraiy, al^bot's lodgings, cloisters ; with 
 the great minster towering uj), a steep pile, half wood, half
 
 184 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 stone, with narrow round-headed windows, and leaden roofs; 
 and, above all, the great wooden tower, from which, on higli 
 days, chimed out the melody of the seven famous bells, whicli 
 had not their like in English land. Guthlac, Bartholomew, and 
 Bettelm were the names of the biggest, Turketul and Tatwin of 
 the middle, and Pega and Bega of the smallest. So says Ingulf, 
 who saw them a few years after jiouring down on his own head 
 in streams of melted metal. Outside the minster walls were 
 the cottages of the corrodiers, or folk who, for a corrody, or life 
 pittance from the abbey, had given away their lands ;^ beyond 
 them again the natural park of grass, dotted with mighty oaks 
 and ashes ; and beyond all those, cornlands of inexhaustible 
 fertility, broken up by the good Abbot Egelric some hundred 
 years iDefore, from which, in times of dearth, the monks of 
 Crowland fed the peoj^le of all tlie neighbouring fens. 
 
 They went into the great courtyard. All men were quiet, 
 yet all men were busy ; baking and brewing, carpentering and 
 tailoring, in the workshops ; reading and writing in the 
 cloister ; praying and singing in the church ; and teaching 
 the children in the schoolhouse. Only the ancient sempects — 
 some near upon a hundred and fifty years old — wandered where 
 they would, or basked against a sunny wall, like autumn flies ; 
 each with a young monk to guide liim, and listen to his tattle 
 of old days. For, said the laws of Turketul the good — ' Nothing 
 disagreeable about the affairs of the monastery shall be men- 
 tioned in their presence. No person sliall presume in any way 
 to offend them : but wath the greatest peace and tranquillity 
 they shall await their end.' 
 
 So while the world outside raged, and fought, and conquered, 
 and plundered, they within the holy isle kept up some sort of 
 order, and justice, and usefulness, and love to God and man. 
 
 ^ This fashion of corrody was one which brought much land to monks 
 and grudging to lieirs-at-law. As an instance — Geoffrey de Brachecourt 
 and his wife, a few years after, gave (with consent of Alan de Morton, his 
 nephew and heir, and Gilbert of Ghent, his feudal lord) his township of 
 Brachecurt or Brathwaite to the Cistercian monks of Vauldey, now Grims- 
 thorpe Park, on the following conditions. That his wife should have 
 clothing of bluet and lambs' skins ; and he of grising or halbergit and 
 lambs' skins ; and that their food should be such as the monks had. 
 Their two servants were to fare the same as those of the brotherhood. 
 The opinion of Alan de Morton concerning such a bargain may be guessed, 
 at least by those who are aware that it was made for the puri^ose of 
 escaping certain j-ears of purgatory, i.e. of burning alive in the next 
 world. 
 
 When we talk of the piety of our ancestors in giving lands to the 
 Church, we should always remember that this was what their piety too 
 often signified. When we complain of the squires, in Edward the Sixth's 
 time, for taking back the treasures and lands of the monasteries, we should 
 remember that they had been got from those squires' forefathers on such 
 grounds as these, and no other.
 
 XX HOW HEREWARD WAS MADE A KNIGHT 185 
 
 And about the yards, among the feet of tlie monks, hopped the 
 sacred ravens, descendants of those wlio brouglit back the 
 gloves at St. Guthlac's bidding ; and overhead, under all the 
 eaves, built tlie sacred swallows, the descendants of those who 
 sat and sang upon St. Guthlac's shoulders ; and when men 
 marvelled thereat, lie the holy man replied, 'Know that they 
 who live the holy life draw nearer to the birds of the air, even 
 as they do to the angels in heaven.' 
 
 And Lady Godiva called for old Abbot Ulfketyl, the good 
 and brave ; and fell upon his neck, and told him all her tale ; 
 and Ulfketyl wept upon her neck, for they were old and faith- 
 ful friends. 
 
 And they passed into the dark cool church, where, in the 
 crypt under the high altar, lay the thumb of St. Bartholomew, 
 which old Abbot Turketul used to carry about, that he might 
 cross himself with it in times of danger, tempest, and lightning ; 
 and some of the hair of St. ]\Iary, queen of heaven, in a box of 
 gold ; and a bone of St. Leodegar of Aquitaine ; and some few 
 remains, too, of the holy bodies of St. Guthlac, and of St. 
 Bettelm, his servant, and St. Tatwin, who steered liim to Crow- 
 land, and St. Egbert his confessor, and St. Cissa the anchorite, 
 and of the most holy virgin St. Etheldreda, and many more. 
 But little of them remained since Sigtryg and Bagsac's heathen 
 Danes had heaped them pell-mell on the floor, and burned the 
 church over them and the bodies of the slaughtered monks. 
 
 The plunder which was taken from Crowland on that evil 
 day lay, and lies still, with the plunder of Peterborough and 
 many a minster more, at the bottom of the Ouse at Huntingdon 
 Bridge. But it had been more than replaced by the piety of 
 the Danish kings and nobles ; and above the twelve white 
 bearskins which lay at the twelve altars blazed, in the light of 
 many a wax candle, gold and jewels inferior only to those of 
 Peterborough and Coventry. 
 
 And there in the nave they buried the lad Godwin, with 
 chant and dirge ; and when the funeral was done, Hereward 
 went up toward the high altar, and bade Winter and Gwenoch 
 come with him. And there he knelt, and vowed a vow to God 
 and St. Guthlac and the Lady Torfrida, his true love, never to 
 leave from slaying while there was a Frenchman left alive on 
 English ground. 
 
 And Godiva and Ulfketyl heard his vow, and shuddered : 
 but they dared not stop him, for they too had English 
 hearts. 
 
 And Winter and Gwenoch heard it, and repeated it word for 
 word. 
 
 Then he kissed his mother, and called Winter and Gwenoch, 
 and went fortli. He would he back again, he said, on the tliird 
 day. 
 
 Then those three went to Peterborough, and asked for Abbot
 
 186 HEREWARD THE WAKE cuap. 
 
 Brand. And the monks let them in ; for the fame of their 
 deed had passed through the forest, and all the French had 
 fled. 
 
 And old Brand lay back in his great armchair, his legs all 
 muffled up in furs, for he could get no heat ; and hy him stood 
 Herluin the jDrior, and wondered when he would die, and 
 Thorold take his place, and they should drive out the old 
 Gregorian chants from the choir, and have the new Norman 
 chants of Robert of Fecamp, and bring in French -Roman 
 customs in all things, and rule the English boors with a rod 
 of iron. 
 
 And old Brand knew all tliat was in his heart, and looked up 
 like a patient ox beneath the butcher's axe, and said, 'Have 
 patience with me, brother Herluin, and I will die as soon as I 
 can, and go where there is neither French nor English, Jew nor 
 Gentile, bond nor free, but all are alike in the eyes of Him who 
 made them.' 
 
 But when he saw Hereward come in, he cast the mufflers off 
 him, and sprang up from his chair, and was young and strong 
 in a moment, and for a moment. 
 
 And he threw his arms round Hereward, and wept upon his 
 neck, as his mother had done. And Hereward wept upon his 
 neck, though he had not wept upon his mother's. 
 
 Then Brand held him at arms' length, or thought he held 
 liim ; for he was leaning on Hereward, and tottering all the 
 while ; and extolled him as the champion, the warrior, the stay 
 of his house, the avenger of his kin, the hero of whom he had 
 always prophesied that his kin would need him, and that then 
 he would not fail. 
 
 But Hereward answered liim modestly and mildly : 
 
 ' Speak not so to me and of me, uncle Brand. I am a very 
 foolish, vain, sinful man, who have come through great adven- 
 tures, I know not how, to great and strange happiness ; and 
 now again to great and strange sorrows ; and to an adventure 
 greater and stranger than all that has befallen me from my 
 youth up until now. Therefore make me not proud, uncle 
 Brand, but keep me modest and lowly, as befits all true knights 
 and penitent sinners ; for they tell me that God resists the 
 proud, and giveth grace to the humble. And I have that to do 
 which do I cannot, unless God and His saints give me grace from 
 this day forth.' 
 
 Brand looked at him, astonished ; and then turned to 
 Herluin. 
 
 ' Did I not tell thee, i^rior 1 This is the lad wliom you called 
 graceless and a savage ; and see, since he has been in foreign 
 lands, and seen the ways of knights, he talks as clerkly as a 
 Frenchman, and as piously as any monk.' 
 
 'The Lord Hereward,' said Herluin, 'has doubtless learned 
 much from the manners of our nation which he would not liave
 
 XX HOW IIEREWARD WAS MADE A KNIGHT 187 
 
 learned in England. I rejoice to see him returned so Christian 
 and so courtly a knight.' 
 
 ' The Lord Hereward, Prior Herluin, has learnt one thing in 
 his travels — to know somewhat of men and the hearts of men, 
 and to deal with them as they deserve of him. They tell me 
 that one Thorold of ^Nlalmesbury — Tliorold of Fecamp, the 
 minstrel, he that made the song of Roland — that he desires this 
 abbey.' 
 
 ' I have so heard, my lord.' 
 
 'Then I command— I, Hereward, Lord of Bourne — that this 
 abbey be held against him and all Frenchmen, in the name of 
 Swend Ulfsson, King of England, and of me. And he that 
 admits a Frenchman therein, I will shave his crown for him so 
 well, that he shall never need razor more. This I tell thee ; 
 and this I shall tell thy monks before I go. And unless you 
 obey the same, my dream will be fulfilled ; and you will see 
 Goldenborough in a light low, and yourselves burning in the 
 midst tliereof.' 
 
 ' Swend Ulfsson 1 Swend of Denmark ? What words are 
 these 1 ' cried Brand. 
 
 ' You will know within six months, uncle.' 
 
 ' I shall know better things, my boy, before six months are 
 out.' 
 
 ' Uncle, uncle, do not say that.' 
 
 'Why not? If this mortal life be at best a prison and a 
 grave, what is it worth now to an Englishman 1 ' 
 
 ' More than ever ; for never had an Englishman such a 
 chance of showing English mettle, and winning renown for the 
 English name. Uncle, you must do something for me and my 
 comrades ere we go.' 
 
 'Well, boy?' _ 
 
 ' Make us knights.' 
 
 ' Knights, lad ? I thought you had been a belted knight this 
 dozen years ? ' 
 
 ' I might have been made a knight by many, after the French 
 fashion, many a year agone. I miglit have been knight when I 
 slew the white bear. Ladies have prayed me to be knighted 
 again and again since. Something kept me from it. Perhaps' 
 (with a glance at Herluin) 'I wanted to show that an English 
 squire could be the rival and the leader of French and Flemish 
 knights.' 
 
 ' And thou hast shown it, brave lad,' said Brand, clapping his 
 great hands. 
 
 'Perhaps I longed to do some mighty deed at last, which 
 would give me a right to go to the bravest knight in all 
 C^hristendom, and say, Give me the accolade, then ! Thou only 
 art worthy to knight as good a man as thyself.' 
 
 ' Pride and vainglory,' said Brand, shaking his head. 
 
 'But now I am of a sounder mind. I see now why I was
 
 188 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 kept from being knighted — till I had done a deed worthy of a 
 true knight ; till I liad mightily avenged the wronged, and 
 mightily succoured the oppressed ; till I had purged my soul of 
 my enmity against my own kin, and could go out into the 
 world a new man, with my mother's blessing on my head.' 
 
 'But not of the robbery of St. Peter,' said Herluin. The 
 French monk wanted not for moral courage : no French monk 
 did in those days. And he proved it by those words. 
 
 ' Do not anger the lad, prior ; now, too, above all times, when 
 his heart is softened towards the Lord.' 
 
 'He has not angered me. The man is right. Here, lord 
 abbot and sir prioi", is a chain of gold, won in the wars. It is 
 worth fifty times the sixteen pence which I stole, and which I 
 repaid double. Let St. Peter take it, for the sins of me and my 
 two comrades, and forgive. And now, sir prior, I do to thee 
 what I never did for mortal man. I kneel and ask thy forgive- 
 ness. Kneel, Winter ! Kneel, Gwenoch ! ' And Hereward 
 knelt. 
 
 Herluin was of double mind. He longed to keep Hereward 
 out of St. Peter's grace. He longed to see Hereward dead at his 
 feet : not because of any personal hatred, but because he foresaw 
 in him a terrible foe to the Norman cause. But he wished, too, 
 to involve Abbot Brand as much as possible in Hei'eward's rebel- 
 lions and misdeeds, and above all, in the master-offence of 
 knighting him ; for for that end, he saw, Hereward was come. 
 Moreovei", he was touched with the sudden frankness and 
 humility of the famous champion. So he answered mildly — 
 
 ' Verily, thou hast a knightly soul. May God and St. Peter 
 so forgive thee and thy companions as I forgive thee, freely and 
 from my heart.' 
 
 ' Now,' cried Hereward ; ' a boon ! A boon ! Knight me and 
 these my fellows, uncle Brand, this day.' 
 
 Brand was old and weak ; and looked at Herluin. 
 
 ' I know,' said Hereward, ' tliat the French look on us English 
 monk-made knights as spurious and adulterine, unworthy of the 
 name of knight. But, I hold — and what churchman will gainsay 
 me? — that it is nobler to receive sword and belt from a man of 
 God than from a man of blood like one's self; for the fittest man 
 to consecrate the soldier of an earthly king is the soldier of Christ 
 the King of kings.' ' 
 
 ' He speaks well,' said Herluin. ' Abbot, grant him his boon.' 
 
 ' Who celebrates high mass to-morrow ? ' 
 
 'Wilton the priest, the monk of Ely,' said Herluin, aloud. 
 'And a very dangerous and stubborn Englishman,' added he to 
 himself. 
 
 ' Good. Then this night you shall watch in the church. To- 
 morrow, after the Gospel, the thing shall be done as you will.' 
 
 ^ Almost word for word from the Life of Hercivard.
 
 XX 
 
 HOW HEREWARD WAS MADE A KNIGHT 189 
 
 Tliat night two messengers, knights of the abbot, galloped 
 from Peterborough. One rode to Ivo Taillebois at Spalding, to 
 tell him that Hereward was at Peterborough ; and that he must 
 try to cut him off upon the Egelric's road, the causeway which 
 one of the many abbots Egelric had made, some thirty years 
 before, through Deeping Fen to Spalding, at an enormous 
 expense of labour and of timber. The other knight rode south, 
 along the Roman road to London, to tell King William of the 
 rising of Kesteven, and all the evil deeds of Hereward and of 
 Brand. 
 
 And old Brand slept quietly in his bed, little thinking on 
 what errands his prior had sent his knights. 
 
 Hereward and his comrades watched that night in St. Peter's 
 church. Oppressed with weariness of body and awe of mind, 
 they heard the monks drone out their chants through the misty 
 gloom ; they confessed the sins — and they were many — of their 
 past wild lives. They had to summon up within themselves 
 courage and strength henceforth to live, not for themselves, but 
 for the fatherland which they hoped to save. They prayed to 
 all the heavenly powers of that Pantheon which then stood 
 between man and God, to help them in the coming struggle : 
 but ere the morning dawned they were nodding, unused to any 
 long strain of mind. 
 
 Suddenly Hereward started, and sprang up, with a cry of fire. 
 'What? Where?' cried his comrades; while the monks 
 ran up. 
 
 ' The minster is full of flame. No use, too late, you cannot 
 put it out. It must burn.' 
 
 ' You have been dreaming,' said one. 
 ' I have not,' said Hereward. ' Is it Lammas night 1 ' 
 ' What a question ! It is the vigil of the Nativity of St. 
 Peter and St. Paul.' 
 
 ' Thank heaven ; I thought my old Lammas night's dream 
 was coming true at last.' 
 
 Herluin heard, and knew what he meant. 
 
 After which Hereward was silent, filled with many thoughts. 
 
 The next morning, before the high mass, those three brave 
 
 men walked up to the altar ; laid thereon their belts and 
 
 swords ; and then knelt humbly at the foot of the steps till the 
 
 Gospel was finished. 
 
 Tlien came down from the altar Wilton of Ely, and laid on 
 each man's bare neck the bare blade, and bade him take back 
 his sword in the name of God and of St. Peter and St. Paul, and 
 use it like a true knight, for a terror and punishment to evil- 
 doers, and a defence for women and orphans, and the poor and 
 the oppressed, and the monks the servants of God. 
 
 And then the monks girded each man with his belt and 
 sword once more. And after mass was sung, they rose, each 
 feeling himself— and surely not in vain — a better man.
 
 190 HEREAVARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 At least this is certain, that Hereward would say to liis dying 
 day, how he had often proved that none would tight so well as 
 those who had received their sword from God's knights tlie 
 monks. Therefore he would have, in after years, almost all his 
 companions kniglited by the monks ; and he brought into Ely 
 with liim that same good custom which he had learnt at Peter- 
 borough, and kept it up as long as he held the isle. 
 
 Tlien lie said — 
 
 ' Have you monks a limner liere, who can paint for me 1 
 
 ' That can I,' said Wilton of Ely. 
 
 ' Then take my shield, and raze from it this bear which I 
 
 carry ' 
 
 Wilton brouglit pencil and paint, and did so. 
 
 ' Now, paint me in a W, that shall stand for Wake ; and make 
 it— make it out of tlie knots of a monk's girdle, for a sign that 
 I am a monk's knight, and not a king's ; and that I am the 
 champion of the monks of England against the monks of France, 
 from this time forth for evermore.' 
 
 Wilton did it ; and made out of two monks' girdles none 
 other than the after-famous Wake knot. 
 
 J Now do the same by Winter and Gwenoch's shields. Monks' 
 knights are we ; and monks' l^attles we will tight.' 
 
 _' You must have a motto to match witlial, my good lord,' said 
 Wilton, throwing his English heart into the work. 
 
 'What better tlian my own name— Wake? These are times 
 in which good Englishmen must not sleep— and sleep I will not, 
 trust me ; nor mine either.' 
 
 ' Vigila, that will be in Latin.' 
 
 ' Ay — let us have Latin ; and show these Frenchmen that we 
 are clerks and gentlemen, as well as they.' 
 
 'Vigila . . . et Ora,' said the monk solemnly, 'Watcli and 
 pray ; lest thou enter into temptation.' 
 
 ' Watch— and pray. Thou speakest like a man of God,' said 
 Hereward, half sadly. 'Thou hast said : so be it. God knows, 
 I have need of that, too, if only I knew how. But I will watch, 
 and my wife shall pray ; and so will the work be well parted 
 between us.' 
 
 And so was born the Wake motto and the Wake knot. 
 
 It was late when they got back to Crowland. The good 
 abbot received them witli a troubled face. 
 
 'As I feared,_my lord, you have been too liot and hasty. The 
 French have raised the country against you.' 
 
 ' I liave raised it against them, my lord.' 
 
 ' But we have news that Sir Frederick ' 
 
 ' And who may he be ? ' 
 
 ' A very terrible Goliath of these French ; old and crafty ; a 
 brother of old Earl Warrenne of Norfolk, wliom God confound. 
 And he has sworn to have your life, and has gathered kniglits 
 and men-at-arms at Lynn in Norfolk.'
 
 XXI HOW IVO TAILLEBOIS MARCHED OUT OF SPALDING 191 
 
 'Very good ; I will visit him as I go home, lord abbot. Not 
 a word of this to any soul.' 
 
 ' I tremble for thee, thou young David.' 
 ' One cannot live for ever, my lord. Farewell.' 
 A week after a boatman brought news to Crowland how Sir 
 Frederick w^as sitting in liis inn at Lynn, when there came in 
 one with a sword, and said, ' I am Hereward the Wake. I was 
 told that thou didst desire greatly to see me ; therefore I am 
 come, being a courteous knight,' and therewith smote off his 
 head. And when the knights and others would have stopped 
 him, he cut his way through them, killing some three or four at 
 each stroke, himself unhurt ; for he was clothed from head to 
 foot in magic armour, and whosoever smote it, their swords 
 melted in their hands. And so gaining the door, he vanished in 
 a great cloud of sea-fowl, that cried for ever ' The Wake is come 
 again.' 
 
 And after that the fen-men said to each other, that all the birds 
 upon the meres cried nothing save 'The Wake is come again.' 
 
 And so, already surrounded with myth and mystery, Here- 
 ward flashed into the fens and out again, like the lightning 
 brand, destroying as he passed. And the hearts of all the 
 French were turned to water ; and the land had peace from its 
 tyrants for many days. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 HOW IVO TAILLEBOIS MARCHED OUT OF SPALDING TOWN 
 
 A PROUD man was Ivo Taillebois, as he rode next morning out 
 of Spalding town, with hawk on fist, hound at heel, and a dozen 
 men-at-arms at his back, who would, on due or undue cause 
 shown, hunt men while he hunted game. 
 
 An adventurer from Anjou, brutal, ignorant, and profligate 
 — low-born, too (for his own men whispered, behind his back, 
 that he was no more than liis name hinted, a wood-cutter's son), 
 he still had his deserts. Valiant he was, cunning, and skilled in 
 \var. He and his troop of Angevine ruttiers had fought like 
 tigers by William's side at Hastings ; and he liad been rewarded 
 with many a manor which had been Earl Algar's, and should 
 now have been Earl Edwin's, or Morcar's, or, it may be, Here- 
 ward's own. 
 
 ' A fat land and fair,' said he to himself ; ' and, after I have 
 hanged a few moi-e of these barbarians, a peaceable fief enough 
 to liand down to the lawful lieirs of my body, if I had one. I 
 must marry. Blessed Virgin ! this it is to serve and honour 
 your gracious glory, as I have always done according to my 
 poor humility. Who would have thought that Ivo Taillebois 
 would ever rise so high in life, as to be looking out for a wife — 
 and that a lady, too ? '
 
 192 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 Then thought he over the peerless beauties of the Lady Lucia, 
 Edwin and Morcar's sister, ahiiost as fair as that hapless aunt 
 of liers, Aldytha, King Harold's widow. Eddeva faira, Eddeva 
 pulcra, stands her name in Domesday-book ; known, even to her 
 Norman conquerors, as the beauty of her time, as Godiva her 
 mother had been before her. Scarcely less beautiful was Lucia, 
 as Ivo had seen her at William's court, half-captive and half- 
 guest : and lie longed for her ; love her he could not. ' I have 
 her father's lands,' quoth he ; ' what more reasonable than to 
 have the daughter, too? And have lier I will, unless the 
 Mamzer, in his present merciful and political mood, makes a 
 countess of her, and marries her up to some Norman coxcomb, 
 with a long pedigree — invented the year before last. _ If he does 
 throw away his daughter on that Earl Edwin, in his fancy for 
 petting and patting these savages into good humour, he is not 
 likely to throw away Edwin's sister on a Taillebois. Well. I 
 must put a spoke in Edwin's wheel. It will not be difficult to 
 make him or Morcar, or both of them, traitors once more and 
 for ever. We must have a rebellion in these parts. I will talk 
 about it to Gilbert of Ghent. We must make these savages 
 desperate, and William furious, or he will be soon giving tliem 
 back their lands, besides asking them to court : and then how 
 are valiant knights like us, who have won England for him, to 
 be paid for their trouble? No, no. We must have a fresh 
 rebellion, and a fresh confiscation, and then when English lasses 
 are going cheap, perhaps the Lady Lucia may fall to my 
 share.' 
 
 And Ivo Taillebois kept his word ; and without difficulty, for 
 he had many to help him. To drive the English to desperation, 
 and to get a pretext for seizing their lands, was the game which 
 the Normans played, and but too well. 
 
 As he rode out of Spalding town, a man was being hanged on 
 the gallows there permanently provided. 
 
 That was so common a sight, that Ivo would not have 
 stopped, had not a priest, who was comforting the criminal, 
 run forward and almost thrown himself under the horse's feet. 
 
 ' ]\Iercy, good my lord, in the name of God and all His saints.' 
 
 Ivo went to ride on. 
 
 ' Mercy ! ' and he laid hands on Ivo's bridle. ' If he took a 
 few pike out of your mere, remember that the mere was his, 
 and liis father's before him ; and do not send a sorely tempted 
 soul out of the world for a paltry fish.' 
 
 ' And where am I to get fish for Lent, sir priest, if every 
 rascal nets my waters, because his father did so before him ? 
 Take your hand off my bridle, or, par le splendour Dex ' (Ivo 
 thought it fine to use King William's favourite oath), ' I will 
 hew it ofi'.' 
 
 The priest looked at him, with something of honest fierce- 
 ness in his eyes ; and dropping the bridle, muttered to himself
 
 XXI HOW lA^O TAILLEBOIS MARCHED OUT OF SPALDING 193 
 
 in Latin : ' Tiie bloodthirsty and deceitful man shall not live 
 out lialf his days. Nevertheless, my trust shall be in Thee, O 
 Lord.' 
 
 .' What art muttering, beast ? Go home to thy wife ' (wife was 
 by no means the word which Ivo used), ' and make the most of 
 lier, before I rout out thee and thy fellow-canons, and put in 
 good monks from Normandy in the place of your drunken 
 English swine. Hang him ! ' shouted he, as the bystanders fell 
 on their knees before the tyrant, crouching in terror, every 
 woman for her husband, every man for wife and daughter. 
 ' And hearken, you fen-frogs all. Whoso touches pike or eel, 
 swimming or wading fowl, within these meres of mine without 
 my leave, I will hang him as I hanged this man ; as I hanged 
 four brothers in a row on Wrokesham Bridge but last week.' 
 
 ' Go to Wrokesham Bridge and see,' shouted a shrill cracked 
 voice from behind the crowd. 
 
 All looked round ; and more than one of Ivo's men set up a 
 yell, the hangman loudest of all. 
 
 ' That's he, the heron again ! Catch him ! Stop him ! 
 Shoot him ! ' 
 
 But that was not so easy. As Ivo pushed his horse through 
 the crowd, careless of whom he crushed, he saw a long lean 
 figure flying througli the air seven feet aloft, his heels higher 
 than his head, on the fartlier side of a deep broad ditch ; and, on 
 the nearer side of the same, one of his best men lying stark, 
 with a cloven skull. 
 
 ' Go to Wrokesham ! ' shrieked the lean man, as he rose, and 
 showed a ridiculously long nose, neck, and legs (a type still not 
 uncommon in the fens), a quilted leather coat, a double-bladed 
 axe slung over his shoulder by a thong, a round shield at his 
 back, and a pole three times as long as himself, which he 
 dragged after him, like an unwieldy tail. 
 
 ' The heron, the heron ! ' shouted the English. 
 
 ' Follow him, men, heron or hawk ! ' shouted Ivo, galloping 
 his horse ujd to the ditch, and stopping short at fifteen feet of 
 water. 
 
 ' Shoot, some one ! Where are the bows gone 1 ' 
 
 The heron was away two hundred yards, running, in spite of 
 his pole, at a wonderful pace, before a bow could be brought to 
 bear. He seemed to expect an arrow, for he stopped, glanced 
 his eye round, threw himself flat on his face, with his sliield, not 
 over his body, but over iiis bare legs ; sprang up as the shaft 
 stuck in the ground beside him ; ran on ; planted his pole in the 
 next dyke, and flew over it. 
 
 In a few minutes he was beyond pursuit and Ivo turned, 
 breathless with rage, to ask who he was. 
 
 'Alas, sir, lie is tlie man who set free the four men at Wrokes- 
 ham Bridge last week.' 
 
 ' Set free ! Are they not hanged and dead ? ' 
 
 II. T. w.
 
 104 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' We— we dare not tell you. But he came upon us ' 
 
 ' Single-handed, you cowards 1 ' 
 
 ' Sir, he is not a man, but a witch or a devil. He asked us 
 what we did there. One of our men laughed at his long neck 
 and legs, and called him Heron. " Heron I am," says he, " and 
 strike like a heron, right at the eyes," and with that he cuts the 
 man over the face with his axe, and laid him dead, and then 
 anotlier and another.' 
 
 ' Till you all i-an away, villains.' 
 
 ' We gave back a step — no more. And he freed one of those 
 four, and he again the rest ; and then they all set on us, and 
 went to hang us in their own stead.' 
 
 ' When there were ten of you, I thought.' 
 
 ' Sir, as we told you, he is no mortal man, but a liend.' 
 
 ' Beasts, fools Well, I have hanged this one, at least ! ' 
 growled Ivo, and then rode sullenly on. 
 
 ' Wlio is this fellow ? ' cried he to the trembling English. 
 
 'Wulfric Baher, Wulfric the Heron, of Wrokesham in 
 Norfolk.' 
 
 ' Aha ! And I hold a manor of his,' said Ivo to himself. 
 'Look you, villains, this fellow is in league with you.' 
 
 A burst of abject denial followed. ' Since the French — since 
 Sir Frederick, as they call him, drove him out of his Wrokesham 
 lands, he wanders the country, as you see ; to-day here : but 
 heaven only knows where he will be to-morrow.' 
 
 'And finds, of course, a fi'iend everywhere. Now march ! ' 
 and a string of threats and curses followed. 
 
 It was hard to see why Wulfric should not have found 
 friends ; as he was simply a small holder, or squire, driven out 
 of house and land, and turned adrift on the wide world, for the 
 offence of having fought in Harold's army at the battle of 
 Hastings. But to give him food or shelter was, in Norman 
 eyes, an act of rebellion against the rightful King William ; and 
 Ivo rode on, boiling over with righteous indignation, along the 
 narrow drove which led towards Deeping. 
 
 A pretty lass came along the drove, driving a few sheep 
 before her, and spinning as she walked. 
 
 ' Whose lass are you ? ' shouted Ivo. 
 
 'The abbot's of Crowland, please your lordship,' said she, 
 trembling. 
 
 ' Much too pretty to belong to monks. Chuck her up behind 
 you, one of you.' 
 
 Tlie shrieking and struggling girl was mounted behind a 
 horseman, and bound ; and Ivo rode on. 
 
 A woman ran out of a turf-hut on the drove .side, attracted 
 by the girl's cries. It was her mother. 
 
 ' My lass ! Give me my lass, for the love of St. Mary and all 
 saints ! ' And she clung to Ivo's bridle. 
 
 He struck her down, and rode on over her.
 
 XXI HOAV IVO TAILLEBOIS MARCHED OUT OF SPALDING 195 
 
 A man cutting sedges in a punt in the lode alongside looked 
 up at the girl's shrieks, and leapt on shore, scythe in hand. 
 
 ' Father ! father ! ' cried she. 
 
 ' I'll rid thee, lass, or die for it,' said he, as he sprang up the 
 drove-dyke, and swept right and left at tlie horses' legs. 
 
 The men recoiled. One horse went down, lamed for life ; 
 another staggered backwards into the fartlier lode, and was 
 drowned. But an arrow went through the brave serf's heart, 
 and Ivo rode on, cursing more bitterly than ever, and com- 
 forted himself by flying his hawks at a covey of partridges. 
 
 Soon a group came along the drove which promised fresh 
 sport to the man-hunters : but as the foremost person came up, 
 Ivo stopped in wonder at the shout of — 
 
 ' Ivo ! Ivo Taillebois ! Halt and have a care ! The English 
 are risen, and we are all dead men ! ' 
 
 The words were spoken in French, and in French Ivo 
 answered, laughing : 
 
 ' Thou art not a dead man yet, it seems, Sir Robert ; art 
 going on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, that thou comest in this 
 fashion 1 Or dost thou mean to return to Anjou as bare as 
 thou camest out of it ? ' 
 
 For Sir Robert had, like Edgar in Shakespeare's Leay; 're- 
 served himself a blanket, else had they all been shamed.' 
 
 But very little more did either he, his lady, and his three child- 
 ren wear, as they trudged along the drove, in even poorer case 
 than that 
 
 Robert of Coningsby, 
 Who came out of Normandy, 
 With his wife Tiffany, 
 And his maid Maupas, 
 And his dog Hardigras. 
 
 'For the love of heaven and all chivalry, joke me no jokes, 
 Sir Ivo : but give me and mine clothes and food. The bar- 
 barians rose on us last night — with Azer, the ruffian who owned 
 ray lands, at their head ; and drove us out into the night as we 
 are, bidding us carry the news to you, for your turn would 
 come next. There are forty or more of them in West Deeping 
 now, and coming eastward, they say, to visit you, and what is 
 more than all, Hereward is come again.' 
 
 ' Hereward ? ' cried Ivo, who knew that name full well. 
 
 Whereon Sir Robert told him the terrible tragedy of Bourne. 
 
 'Mount the lady on a horse, and wrap her in my cloak. 
 Get that dead villain's clothes for Sir Robert as we go back. 
 Put your horses' heads about and ride for Spalding.' 
 
 ' Wliat shall we do with the lass V 
 
 'We cannot be burdened with the jade. She has cost us 
 two good horses already. Leave her in the road, bound as she 
 is, and let us see if St. Guthlac her master will come and untie 
 her.'
 
 196 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 So they i*ode back. Coming from Deeping two hours after, 
 Azer and his men found tlie girl on the road, dead. 
 
 ' Another count in the long score,' quoth Azer. But wlien, in 
 two hours more, they came to Spalding town, they found all the 
 folk upon the street, shouting and praising the host of heaven. 
 There was not a Frenchman left in the town. 
 
 For when Ivo returned home, ere yet Sir Rebert and his 
 family were well clothed and fed, there galloped into Spalding 
 from the north. Sir Ascelin, whilome of St. Valeri, nephew 
 and man of Thorold, would-be abbot of Peterborough. 
 
 ' Not bad news, I hope 1 ' cried Ivo, as Ascelin clanked into 
 the hall. ' We have enough of our own. Here is all Kesteyen, 
 as the barbarians call it, risen, and tliey are murdering us right 
 and left.' 
 
 ' Worse news than that,, Ivo Taillebois ' — ' sir,' or '_ sieur,' 
 Ascelin was loth to call him, being himself a man of family and 
 fashion ; and holding the nouveaux venus in deep contempt. 
 ' Worse news than that. The North has risen again, and pro- 
 claimed Prince Edgar king.' 
 
 ' A king of words ! What care I, or you, as long as the 
 Mamzer, God bless him, is a king of deeds ? ' 
 
 'They have done their deeds, though, too. Gospatric and 
 Marlesweyn are back out of Scotland. They attacked liobert 
 de Comines^ at Durham, and burnt him in his own house. 
 There was but one of his men got out of Durham to tell the 
 news. And now they have marched on York ; and all the 
 chiefs, they say, have joined them — Ai-chill the thane, and 
 Edwin and Morcar, and Waltheof too, the young traitors.' 
 
 ' Blessed virgin ! ' cried Ivo, ' thou art indeed gracious to thy 
 most unworthy knight ! ' 
 ' What do you mean 1 ' 
 
 'You will see some day. Now, I will tell you but one word. 
 When fools make hay, wise men build ricks. This rebellion — if 
 it had not come of itself, I would have roused it. We wanted 
 it, to cure William of this just and benevolent policy of his, 
 which would have ended in sending us back to France, as poor 
 as we left it. Now, what am I expected to do? What says 
 Gilbert of Ghent, the wise man of Lie — nic — what the pest do 
 you call that outlandish place, which no civilised lips can pro- 
 nounce 1 ' 
 
 ' Lie nic-cole V replied Ascelin, who, like the rest of the French, 
 never could manage to say Lincoln. ' He says, " March to me, 
 and with me to join the king at York."' 
 
 ' Then he says well. These fat acres will be none the leaner, 
 if I leave the finglish slaves to crop them for six months. Men ! 
 arm and hoi'se Sir Ilobert of Deeping. Then arm and horse 
 yourselves. We march north in half an hour, bag and baggage, 
 
 ^ Ancestor of the Comyns of Scotland.
 
 XXII HOW HEREWARD SAILED FOR ENGLAND 197 
 
 scrip and scrippage. You are all bachelors, like me, and travel 
 light. So off with you ! Sir Ascelin, you will eat and drink 1 ' 
 
 'That will!.' 
 
 ' Quick, then, butler ; and after that pack up the English- 
 man's plate-chest, which we inherited by right of fist- — the only 
 plate, and the only title-deeds I ever possessed.' 
 
 'Now, Sir Ascelin' — as the three knights, the lady, and the 
 poor children ate their fastest — ' listen to me. The art of war 
 lies in this one nutshell — to put the greatest number of men 
 into one place at one time, and let all other places shift ; so 
 striking swiftly, and striking heavily. That is the rule of our 
 liege lord King William ; and by it he will conquer England, or 
 the world, if he will ; and while he does that, he shall never say 
 that Ivo Taillebois stayed at home to guard his own manors, 
 while he could join his king, and win all the manors of England 
 once and for all.' 
 
 ' Pardex ! whatever men may say of thy lineage or thy virtues, 
 they cannot deny this, that thou art a most wise and valiant 
 captain.' 
 
 'That am I,' quoth Taillebois, too much pleased with the 
 praise to care about being tutoye by a younger man. ' As for 
 my lineage, my lord the king has a fellow-feeling for upstarts ; 
 and the woodman's grandson may very well serve the tanner's. 
 Now, men ! is the litter ready for the lady and children 1 I am 
 sorry to rattle you about thus, madame ; but war has no cour- 
 tesies, and march I must.' 
 
 And so the French went out of Spalding town. 
 
 ' Don't be in a hurry to thank your saints ! ' shouted Ivo to 
 his A'ictims. ' I shall be back this day three months ; and then 
 you shall see a row of gibbets all the way from here to Deeping, 
 and an Englishman hanging on every one.' 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 HOW HEREWARD SAILED FOR ENGLAKD ONCE AND FOR ALL 
 
 So Hereward fought the Viscount of Pinkney, wlio liad the usual 
 luck which befell those who crossed swords with liim, and 
 plotted meanwhile with Gyda and the Countess Judith. Abbot 
 Egelsin sent them news from King Sweyn in Denmark ; soon 
 Judith and Tosti's two sons went themselves to Sweyn, and 
 helped the plot and the fitting out of the armament. News they 
 had from England in plenty, by messengers from Queen Matilda 
 to the sister who was intriguing to dethrone her husband, and 
 by private messengers from Durham and from York. 
 
 lialdwin, the debonnaire marquis, had not lived to see tliis 
 fruit of his long eft'orts to please everybody. He had gone to 
 his rest the year before ; and now tliere ruled in Bruges liis son.
 
 198 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 Baldwin the Good, ' Count Palatine,' as he styled himself, and 
 his wife Richilda, the Lady of Hainault. 
 
 They probably cared as little for the success of their sister 
 Matilda, as tliey did for that of their sister Judith ; and followed 
 out — Baldwin at least — the great marquis's plan of making 
 Flanders a retreat for the fugitives of all the countries round. 
 
 At least, if (as seems) Sweyn's fleet made the coast of Flanders 
 its rendezvous and base of operations against King William, 
 Baldwin oflered no resistance. 
 
 So the messengers came, and the plots went on. Great was 
 the delight of Hereward and the ladies when they heard of the 
 taking of Durham and York ; but bitter their suriDrise and rage 
 when they heard that Gospatric and the confederates had pro- 
 claimed Atheling king. 
 
 ' Fools ! they will ruin all ! ' cried Gyda. ' Do they expect 
 Sweyn Ulfsson, wlio never moved a finger yet, unless he saw 
 that it would pay hina within the hour, to spend blood and 
 treasure in putting that puppet boy upon the throne instead of 
 himself?' 
 
 ' Calm yourself, great countess,' said Hereward, with a smile. 
 'The man who puts liim on the throne will find it very easy to 
 take him off again wlien he needs.' 
 
 ' Pish ! ' said Gyda. ' He must put him on the throne first. 
 And how will he do that ? Will the men of the Danelagh, much 
 less the Northumbrians south of Tyne, ever rally round an 
 Atheling of Cerdic's house ? ' 
 
 ' Those between Tyne and Forth will join him,' said Hereward. 
 ' Tliey are Saxons like himself.' 
 
 ' And who are they, that three-fourths of England should be 
 scorned for their sake ? If tlieir cousins of Wessex, with my 
 boys at their head, could not face this Frenchman, how will 
 they ? It is in my blood and my kin, in the Danelagh and the 
 Danes, that the strengtli of England lies, and not in a handful 
 of Scotcli earls, backed by a barbarian like Malcolm. If the 
 boy Edgar be Gospatric's cousin, or Malcolm's brother-in-law, 
 what is that to England, or indeed to them 1 The boy is a mere 
 stalking-horse, behind which each of these greedy chiefs expects 
 to get back his own lands in tlie north ; and if they can get them 
 back by any other means, well and good. Mark my words, Sir 
 Hereward, that cunning Frencliman will treat with tliem one by 
 one, and betray them one by one, till there is none left.' 
 
 How far Gyda was right will be seen hereafter. But a less 
 practised diplomat than the great countess might have specu- 
 lated reasonably on such an event. The connection between 
 Scotch and English royalty was, at the moment, most harmful 
 to England. But more harmful far would it have been, had the 
 Danish invasion succeeded ; had England been parted, perhaps 
 for ever, from the ruling houses of Scotland, and become a iiiere 
 appanage of the Scandinavian kings.
 
 XXII HOW HEREWARD SAILED FOR ENGLAND 199 
 
 Then came darker news. As Ivo had foreseen, and as Ivo had 
 done his best to bring about, William dashed on York, and drove 
 out the confederates with terrible slaughter, profaned the 
 churches, plundered the town. Gospatric and the earls retreated 
 to Durham ; the Atheling, more cautious, to Scotland. 
 
 Then came a strange story, worthy of the grown children who, 
 in those old times, bore the hearts of boys with the ferocity and 
 intellect of men. 
 
 A great fog fell on the Frenchmen as they struggled over the 
 Durham moors. The doomed city was close beneath them ; 
 they heard Wear roaring in his wooded gorge. But a darkness, 
 as of Egypt, lay upon them : ' neither rose any from his place.' 
 
 Then the Frenchman cried, ' This darkness is from St. Cuth- 
 bert himself. We have invaded his holy soil. Who has not 
 heard how none who offend St. Cuthbert ever went unpunished ? 
 how palsy, blindness, madness, fall on those who dare to violate 
 his sanctuary 1 ' 
 
 And the French turned and fled before the face of St. Cuth- 
 bert ; and William went down to Winchester angry and sad, and 
 then went off to Gloucestershire, and hunted — for whatever 
 befell, he still would hunt — in the forest of Dean. 
 
 And still Sweyn and his Danes had not sailed ; and Hereward 
 walked to and fro in his house impatiently, and bided his 
 time. 
 
 In July Baldwin died. Arnoul, the boy, was Count of Flan- 
 ders, and Richilda, his sorceress-mother, ruled the land in his 
 name. She began to oppress the Flemings — not those of French 
 Flander.s, round St. Omer, but those of Flemish Flanders, toward 
 the north. They threatened to send for Robert the Frison to 
 right them. 
 
 Hereward was perplexed. He was Robert the Frison 's friend, 
 and old soldier. Richilda was Torfrida's fiiend ; so was, still 
 more, the boy Arnoul ; which party should he take ? Neither, 
 if he could help it. And he longed to be safe out of the land. 
 
 And at last his time came. Martin Lightfoot ran in, breath- 
 less, to tell how the sails of a mighty fleet were visible from the 
 Dunes. 
 
 'Here?' cried Hereward. 'What are the fools doing down 
 here, wandering into the very jaws of the wolf ? How will they 
 land here ? They were to have gone straight to the Lincolnshire 
 coast. God grant this mistake be not the first of dozens ! ' 
 
 Hereward went into Torfrida's bower. 
 
 'This is an evil business. The Danes are here, where they 
 have no business, instead of l)f'ing off Scheldtmouth, as I entreated 
 them. But go we must, or be for ever shamed. Now, true wife, 
 are you ready ? Dare you leave home, and kin, and friends, once 
 and for all, to go, you know not whither, with one who may be 
 a gory corpse by this day week 1' 
 
 ' I dare,' said she.
 
 200 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 So tliey went down the Aa by night, with Torfrida's mother, 
 and the cliild, and all their jewels, and all they had in the world. 
 And their hovisecarles went with tliem, forty men, tried and 
 trained, who had vowed to follow Hereward I'ound the world. 
 And there were two longships ready, and twenty good mariners 
 in each. So when the Danes made the South Foreland the next 
 morning, they were aware of two gallant ships bearing down on 
 them, with a strange knot embroidered on their sails. 
 
 A i^roud man was Hereward that day, as he sailed into the 
 midst of the Danish fleet, and up to the royal ships, and 
 shouted — 
 
 ' I am Hereward the Wake, and I come to take service under 
 my rightful lord, Sweyn, King of England.' 
 
 ' Come on board, then ; well do we know you, and right glad 
 we are to have The Wake with us.' 
 
 And Hereward laid his ship's bow upon the quarter of the 
 royal ship (to lay alongside was imiDossible, for fear of breaking 
 cars), and came on board. 
 
 ' And thou art Hereward ? ' asked a tall and noble warrior. 
 
 ' I am. And thou art Sweyn Ulfsson, the king ? ' 
 
 ' I am Jarl Asbiorn, his brother.' 
 
 ' Then where is the king 1 ' ' 
 
 ' He is in Denmark, and I command his fleet ; and with me 
 Canute and Harold, Sweyn's sons, and jarls and bishops enough 
 for all England.' 
 
 This was spoken in a somewhat haughty tone, in answer to 
 the look of suri:)rise and disappointment which Hereward had, 
 unawares, allowed to pass over his face. 
 
 'Thou art better than none,' said Hereward. 'Now, hearken, 
 Asbiorn the jarl. Had Sweyn been here, I would have put my 
 hand between his, and said in my own name, and that of all the 
 men in Kesteven and the fens, Sweyn's men we are, to live and 
 die ! But now, as it is, I say for me and them, thy men we are, 
 to live and die, as long as thou art true to us.' 
 
 ' True to you I will be,' said Asbiorn. 
 
 ' Be it so,' said Hereward. ' True we shall be, whatever betide. 
 Now, whither goes Jarl Asbiorn, and all his great meinie ? ' 
 
 ' We purpose to try Dover.' 
 
 ' You will not take it. The Frenchman has strengthened it 
 with one of his accursed keeps, and without battering engines 
 you may sit before it a month.' 
 
 ' WJiat if I ask you to go in thither yourself, and try the 
 mettle and the luck wliich, they say, never failed Hereward yet?' 
 
 ' I should say that it was a child's trick to throw away against 
 a i^altry stone wall the life of a man who was ready to raise 
 for you, in Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire, live times as many 
 men as you will lose in taking Dover.' 
 
 'Hereward is right,' said more than one jarl. 'We shall 
 need him in his own country.'
 
 xxii HOW HEREWARD SAILED FOR ENGLAND 201 
 
 'If you are wise, to that country you yourselves will go. It 
 is ready to receive you. This is ready to oppose you. You are 
 attacking the Frenchman at his strongest jDoint, instead of his 
 weakest. Did I not send again and again, entreating you to 
 cross from Scheldtmouth to the Wash, and send me word that 
 I might come and raise the Fen-men for you, and then we would 
 all go north together ? 
 
 ' I have heard, ere now,' said Asbiorn haughtily, ' that Here- 
 ward, though he be a valiant Viking, is more fond of giving 
 advice than of taking it.' 
 
 Hereward was about to answer very fiercely. If he had, no 
 one would have thought any harm, in those plain-spoken times. 
 But he was Avise ; and restrained himself, remembering that 
 Torf rida was there, all but alone, in tlie midst of a fleet of savage 
 men ; and that beside, he had a great deed to do, and must do 
 it as he could. So he answered — 
 
 'Asbiorn the jarl has not, it seems, heard this of Hereward : 
 that because he is accustomed to command, he is also accustomed 
 to obey. What thou wilt do, do, and bid me do. _ He that 
 quarrels with his captain, cuts his own throat and his fellows' 
 too.' 
 
 'Wisely spoken !' said the jarls ; and Hereward went back 
 to his sliip. 
 
 'Torfrida,' said he bitterly, 'the game is lost before it is 
 begun.' 
 
 ' God forbid, my beloved ! What words are these ? ' 
 
 ' Sweyn — fool that he is with his over-caution — always the 
 same— has let the prize slip from between his fingers. He has 
 sent Asbiorn instead of himself.' 
 
 ' But why is that so terrible a mistake ? ' 
 
 'We do not want a fleet of Vikings in England, to plunder 
 the French and English alike. We want a king, a king, a king !' 
 and Hereward stamped with rage. 'And instead of a king we 
 have this Asbiorn — all men know him — greedy, and false, and 
 weak-headed. Here he is going to be beaten ofi' at Dover ; and 
 then, 1 suppose, at the next port ; and so forth, till the whole 
 season is wasted, and the ships and men lost by driblets. Pray 
 for us to God and His saints, Torfrida, you who are nearer to 
 heaven than I ; for we never needed it more.' 
 
 So Asbiorn went in ; tried to take Dover ; and was beaten 
 off" with heavy loss. 
 
 Then tlie jarls bade him take Hereward's advice. But he 
 would not. 
 
 So he went round the Foreland, and tried Sandwich — as if, 
 landing there, he would have been safe in marching on London, 
 in the teeth of the elite of Normandy. 
 
 But he was beaten oft' there witli more loss. Then, too late, 
 he took Hereward's advice — or, rather, lialf of it — and sailed 
 north ; but only to commit more follies.
 
 202 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 He dai'ed not enter the Thames. He would not go on to the 
 Wasli ; but he went into the Orwell, and attacked Ipswich, 
 plundering right and left, instead of proclaiming King Sweyn, 
 and calling the Danish folk around him. They naturally 
 enough rose ; and, like valiant men, beat him off ; while Here- 
 ward lay outside the river mouth, his soul within him black 
 with disappointment, I'age, and shame. He would not go in. 
 He would not tight against his own countrymen. He would 
 not helj) to turn the whole plan into a marauding raid. And 
 he told Jarl Asbiorn so, so fiercely, that his life would have been 
 in danger, had not the force of his arm been as much feared as 
 the force of his name was needed. 
 
 At last they came to Yarmouth. Asbiorn would needs land 
 there, and try Norwich. 
 
 Herewai'd was nigh desperate : but he hit upon a plan. Let 
 Asbiorn do so, if he would. He himself would sail round to the 
 Wash, raise the Fen-men, and march eastward at their head 
 through Norfolk to meet him. Asbiorn himself could not refuse 
 so rational a proposal. All the jarls and bishops approved 
 loudly ; and away Hereward went to the Wash, his heart well- 
 nigh broke, foreseeing nothing but evil. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 HOW HEREWARD GATHERED AN ARMY 
 
 The voyage round the Norfolk coast was rough and wild. 
 Torfrida was ill ; the little girl was ill ; the poor old mother 
 was so ill that she could not even say her prayers. Packed 
 uncomfortably under the awning on the poop, Torfrida looked 
 on from beneath it upon the rolling water-waste, with a heart 
 full of gloomy forebodings, and a brain whirling with wild 
 fancies. The wreaths of cloud were gray witches, hurrying on 
 with the ship to work her woe ; the low red storm-dawn was 
 streaked with blood ; the water which gurgled all night under 
 the lee was alive witli hoarse voices ; and again and again she 
 started from fitful slumber to clasp the child closer to her, or 
 look up for comfort to the sturdy figure of her husband, as he 
 stood, like a tower of strength, steering and commanding, the 
 long night through. 
 
 Yes ; on him she could depend. On his courage, on his skill. 
 And as for his love, had she not that utterly ? and what more 
 did woman need 1 
 
 But she was going, she scarce knew whither ; and she scarce 
 knew for what. At least, on a fearful adventure, which might 
 have a fearful end. She looked at the fair child, and reproached 
 herself for a moment ; at the poor old mother, whining and 
 mumbling, her soft southern heart quite broken by the wild
 
 XXIII HOW HEREWARD GATHERED AN ARMY 203 
 
 chill northern sea-breeze ; and reproached herself still more. 
 But was it not her duty ? Him she loved, and his she was ; and 
 him she must follow, over sea and land, till death ; and if 
 l^ossible, beyond deatli again for ever. For Jiis sake she would 
 slave. For his sake she would be strong. If ever there rose in 
 her a home-sickness, a regret for leaving Flanders, and much 
 more for that sunnier south wliere she was born, he at least 
 should never be saddened or weakened by one hint of her sad- 
 ness and weakness. And so it befell that, by the time they 
 made the coast, she had (as the old chronicler says) ' altogether 
 conquered all womanly softness.' 
 
 And yet she shuddered at the dreary mud-creek into which 
 they ran their ships, at the dreary flats on which they landed 
 shivering, swept over by the keen north-east wind. A lonely 
 land ; and within, she knew not what of danger, it might be of 
 hideous death. 
 
 But she would be strong : and when they were all landed, 
 men, arms, baggage, and had pitched the tents which the wise 
 Herewai'd had brought with them, she rose up like a queen, and 
 took her little one by the hand, and went among the men, and 
 spoke : 
 
 ' Housecarles and mariners ! You are following a great 
 captain upon a great adventure. How great he is you know 
 as well as I. I have given him myself, my wealth, and all I 
 liave ; and have followed him I know not whither, because I 
 trust him utterly. Men, trust him as I trust him, and follow 
 him to the death.' 
 
 'That we will!' 
 
 ' And men, I am here among you, a weak woman, trying to be 
 brave for his sake — and for yours. Be true to me, too, as I have 
 been true to you. For your sake have I worked hard, day and 
 night, for many a year. For you I have baked, and brewed, 
 and cooked, like any poor churl's wife. Is there a garment on 
 your backs whicli my hands have not mended ? Is there a 
 wound on your limbs which my hands have not salved ? Oh, if 
 Torfrida has been true to you, promise me this day that you 
 will be true men to her and hers • that if — which Heaven for- 
 bid — aught should befall him and me, you will protect this my 
 poor old mother, and this my child, who has grown up amongst 
 you all — a lamb brought up within the lion's den. Look at her, 
 men, and promise me, on the faith of valiant soldiers, that you 
 Avill be lions on lier behalf, if she shall ever need you. Promise 
 me, that if you have but one more stroke left to strike on earth, 
 you will strike it to defend the daughter of Hereward and 
 Torfrida from cruelty and shame.' 
 
 The men answered with a shout which rolled along the fen, 
 and startled the wild fowl up from far-off pools. They 
 crowded round their lady ; they kissed her hands ; they bent 
 down and kissed their little playmate ; and swore — one by God
 
 204 IIEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 and His apostles, and the next by Odin and Thor — that she 
 should be a daughter to each and every one of them, as long as 
 they could grip steel in hand. 
 
 Then (says the chronicler) Hereward sent on spies, to see 
 whether the Frenchmen were in the land, and how folks fared 
 at Holbeach, Spalding, and Bourne. 
 
 The two young Siwards, as knowing the country and the 
 folk, pushed forward, and with them Martin Lightfoot, to bring 
 back news. 
 
 Martin ran back all the way from Holbeach, tlie very first 
 day, with right good tidings. There was not a Frenchman in 
 the town. Neither was there, they said, in Spalding. Ivo 
 Taillebois was still away at the wars, and long might he stay. 
 
 So forward they marclied, and everywhere the landsfolk were 
 tilling the ground in peace ; and wlien they saw that stout array, 
 they hurried out to meet the troops, and burdened them with 
 food, and ale, and all they needed. 
 
 And at Holbeach, and at Spalding, Hereward split up the 
 war-arrow, and sent it through Kesteven, and south into the 
 Cambridge fens, calling on all men to arm, and come to him at 
 Bourne, in the name of Waltheof and Morcar the earls. 
 
 And at every farm and town he blew the war -horn, and 
 summoned every man who could bear arms to be ready, against 
 the coming of the Danish host from Norwich. And so through 
 all the fens came true what the wild fowl said upon the meres, 
 that The Wake was come again. 
 
 And when he came to Bourne, all men were tilling in peace. 
 The terror of The Wake had fallen on the Frenchmen ; and no 
 man had dared to enter on liis inheritance, or to set a French 
 foot over the threshold of that ghastly hall, above the gable 
 whereof still grinned tlie fifteen heads ; on the floor whereof 
 still spread the dark stains of blood. 
 
 Only Gery dwelt in a corner of the house, and with liim 
 Leofric, once a roystering Jiousecarle of Hereward's youth ; now 
 a monk of Crowland, and a deacon, whom Lady Godiva had 
 sent thither that he might take care of her poor. And there 
 Gery and Leofric had kept house, and told sagas to each other 
 over the beech-log fire night after night ; for all Leofric's study 
 was, says the chronicler, ' to gather together for the edification 
 of his hearers all the acts of giants and warriors out of the 
 fables of the ancients, or from faithful report ; and to commit 
 them to writing, that he might keep England in mind thereof.' 
 Which Leofric was afterwards ordained priest, probably in Ely, 
 by Bishop Egelwin of Durham ; and was Hereward's chaplain 
 for many a year. 
 
 Then Hereward, as he had promised, set fire to the three 
 farms close to the Bruneswold ; and all his outlawed friends, 
 lurking in the forest, knew by that signal that Hereward was 
 come again. So they cleansed out the old house, though they
 
 XXIII HOW HEREWARD GATHERED AN ARMY 205 
 
 did not take down the heads from off the gable • and Torfrida 
 went about the town, and about it, and confessed that England 
 was after all a pleasant place enough. And they were as happy, 
 it may be, for a week or two, as ever they had been in their 
 lives. 
 
 ' And now,' said Torfrida, ' while you see to your army, I 
 must be doing ; for I am a lady now, and mistress of great 
 estates. So I must be seeing to the poor.' 
 
 ' But you cannot speak their tongue.' 
 
 ' Can I not ? Do you think that in the face of coming to 
 England, and fighting here, and plotting here, and being, may 
 be, an earl's countess, I have not made Martin Lightfoot teach 
 me your English tongue, till I can speak it as well as you ? I 
 kept that hidden as a surprise for you, that you might find out, 
 when you most needed, how Torfrida loved you.' 
 
 'As if I had not found out already ! O woman, woman ! 
 I verily believe that God made you alone, and left the devil to 
 make us butchers of men.' 
 
 Meanwhile went round through all the fens, and north into 
 the Bruneswold, and away again to Lincoln and merry Sher- 
 wood, that The Wake was come again. And Gilbert of Ghent, 
 keeping Lincoln Castle for the Conqueror, was perplexed in 
 mind, and looked well to gates, and bars, and sentinels ; for 
 Hereward sent him at once a message, that forasmuch as he 
 had forgotten his warning in Bruges street, and put a rascal 
 cook into his mother's manors, he should ride Odin's horse on 
 the highest ash in the Bruneswold. 
 
 On which Gilbert of Ghent, inquiring what Odin's horse 
 might be, and finding it to signify the ash tree whereon, as 
 sacred to Odin, thieves were hanked by Danes and Norse, made 
 answer : 
 
 That he Gilbert had not imt his cook into Bourne, nor other- 
 wise harmed Hereward or his. That Bourne had been seized 
 by the king himself, together with Earl Morcar's lands in those 
 parts, as all men knew. That the said cook so pleased the king 
 with a dish of stewed eel-pout, which he served up to him at 
 Cambridge, and which the king had never eaten before, that the 
 king begged the said cook of him Gilbert and took him away ; and 
 that after, so he heard, the said cook had begged the said manor 
 of Bourne of the king, without the knowledge or consent of him 
 Gilbert. That he therefore knew nought of the matter. That 
 if Hereward meant to keep the king's peace, he might live in 
 Bourne till Doomsday, for aught he Gilbert cared : but that if 
 he and his men meant to break the king's peace, and attack 
 Lincoln city, he Gilbert would nail their skins to the door of 
 Lincoln Cathedral, as they used to do by the heathen Danes in 
 old time. And that, therefore, they now understood each other. 
 
 At which Hereward laughed, and said that they had done 
 that for many a year.
 
 206 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 And now poured into Bourne from every side brave men and 
 true, some great holders dispossessed of their land ; some the 
 sons of holders who were not yet dispossessed ; some Morcar's 
 men, some Edwin's, who had heen turned out by the king ; and 
 almost all of them, probably, blood relations of Hereward's, or 
 of King Harold's, or of each other. 
 
 To him came ' Guenoch and Alutus Gurgan, foremost in all 
 valour and fortitude, tall and large, and ready for work,' and 
 Avith them their three nephews, Godwin Gille, 'so called be- 
 cause he was not inferior to that Godwin Guthlacsson who is 
 preached much in the fables of the ancients,' and ' Douti and 
 Outi, the twins, alike in face and manners'; and Godric, the 
 knight of Corby, nephew of the ' Count of Warwick, and thus, 
 pi-obably, Hereward's first cousin or nephew ' ; and Tosti of Dave- 
 nesse, his kinsman ; and Azer Vass, whose father had possessed 
 Lincoln Tower ; and Leof win Moue — that is, the scythe, so called 
 'because when he was mowing all alone, and twenty country 
 folk set on him with pitchforks and javelins, he slew and 
 wounded almost every one, sweeping his scythe among them 
 as one that moweth'; and Wluncus the Blackface, so called 
 because he once blackened his face with coal, and came unknown 
 among the enemy, and slew ten of them with one lance ; and 
 ' Turbertin, a great-grandson (?) of Earl Edwin ' ; and Leofwin 
 Prat (perhaps the ancestor of the ancient and honourable house 
 of Pratt of Ptyston), so called from his ' Prtet ' or craft, ' because 
 he had often escaped cunningly when taken by the enemy, 
 having more than once killed his keepers ' ; and the steward of 
 Drayton ; and Thurkill and Utlamhe, i.e. the outlaw, Hereward's 
 cook ; and Oger, Hereward's kinsman ; and ' Winter and Liveret, 
 two very famous ones' ; and Kandal the Seneschal of Kamsey — 
 ' he was the standard bearer ' ; and Wulf ric the Black and Wulf ric 
 the White ; and Hugh the Norman, a priest ; and Wulfard, his 
 brother ; and Tosti and Godwin of Pvothwell ; and Alsin and 
 Hurkill ; and Hugh the Breton, who was Hereward's chaplain; 
 and Whishaw, his brother, ' a magnificent knight, which two 
 came with him from Flanders '; — and so forth : — names merely, of 
 whom naught is known, save, in a few cases, from Domesday- 
 book, the manors which they held. But honour to their very 
 names. Honour to the last heroes of the old English race. 
 
 These valiant gentlemen, with the housecarles whom, more 
 or fewer, they would bring with them, constituted a formidal:)le 
 force, as after years proved well. But having got his men, 
 Hereward's first care was, doubtless, to teach them that art of 
 war of which they, like true Englishmen, knew nothing. 
 
 The art of war has changed little, if at all, by the introduc- 
 tion of gunpowder. The campaigns of Hannibal and Ctesar 
 succeeded by the same tactics as those of Frederic and Welling- 
 ton ; and so, as far as we can judge, did those of the master- 
 general of his age, William of Normandy.
 
 XXIII HOW HEREAVARD GATHERED AN ARMY 207 
 
 But of those tactics the English knew nothing. Their armies 
 were little more than tumultuous levies, in which men marched 
 and fought under local leaders, often divided by local jealousies. 
 The commissariats of the armies seem to have been so worth- 
 less that they had to plunder friends as well as foes as they 
 went along ; and with plunder came every sort of excess — as 
 when the Northern men, marching down to meet Harold God- 
 winsson, and demand young Edwin as their earl, laid waste, 
 seemingly out of mere brute wantonness, the country round 
 Xorthampton, which must have been in Edwin's earldom, or at 
 least in that of his brother Morcar. And even the local leaders 
 were not over-well obeyed. The reckless spirit of personal in- 
 dependence, especially among the Anglo-Danes, prevented any- 
 tliing like discipline, or organised movement of masses ; and 
 made every battle degenerate into a confusion of single com- 
 bats. 
 
 But Hereward had learned that art of war which enabled 
 the Frencli to crush piecemeal, with their inferior numbers, 
 the vast but straggling levies of the English. His men, 
 mostly outlaws and homeless, kept together by the pressure 
 from without, and free from local jealousies, resembled rather 
 an army of professional soldiers than a country posse comitatus. 
 And to the discipline which he instilled into them ; to his 
 ability in marching and manoeuvring troops ; to his care for 
 their food and for their transport ; possibly also to his training 
 them in that art of fighting on horseback in which the men of 
 Wessex, if not the Anglo-Danes of the East, are said to have 
 been quite unskilled — in short, to all that he had learned as a 
 mercenary under Robert the Frison, and among the highly 
 civilised warriors of Flanders and Normandy, must be attributed 
 the fact that he and liis little army defied for years the utmost 
 efforts of the Frenchmen ; appearing and disappearing with such 
 strange swiftness, and conquering against such strange odds, as 
 enshrouded the guerilla captain in an atmosphere of myth and 
 wonder, only to be accounted for, in the mind of French as well 
 as English, hj the supernatural counsels of his sorceress wife. 
 
 But Hereward grew anxious and more anxious as days and 
 weeks went on, and yet there was no news of Asbiorn and his 
 Danes at Norwich. Time was precious. He had to march his 
 little army to the Wash, and then transport it by boats — no 
 easy matter — to Lynn in Norfolk, as his nearest point of 
 attack. And as the time went on, Earl Warren and Italph de 
 Guader would have gathered their forces between him and tlie 
 Danes ; and a landing at Lynn miglit become impossible. 
 Meanwliile there were bruits of great doings in the north of 
 Lincolnshire. Young Earl Waltheof was said to be there, and 
 Edgar the Atheling witli him : but what it portended, no man 
 knew. Morcar was said to have raised tl>e centre of ]\Iercia, 
 and to be near Stafford ; Edwin to have raised the Welsh, and
 
 208 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 to be at Chester with Aldytha liis sister. And Here ward sent 
 spies along the Ermine Street — tlie only road, tlien, toward the 
 north-west of England — and spies northward along tlie Roman 
 road to Lincoln, But the former met tlie French in force near 
 Nottingham, and came back much faster than they went. And 
 tlie latter stumbled on Gilbert of Ghent, riding out of Lincoln 
 to Folkingham, and had to flee into the fens, and came back 
 much slower than they went. 
 
 At last news came. For into Bourne stalked Walfric the 
 Heron, with axe, and bow, and leaping-pole on shoulder ; and 
 an evil tale he brought. 
 
 The Danes had been beaten utterly at Norwich. Ralph 
 de Guader and his Frenchmen had fought like lions. They had 
 killed many Danes in the assault on the castle. They had 
 sallied out on them as they recoiled ; and driven them into the 
 river, drowning many more. The Danes had gone down the 
 Yare again, and out to sea northward, no man knew whither. 
 He, the Heron, prowling about the fenlands of Norfolk, to pick 
 off straggling Frenchmen and look out for the Danes, had heard 
 all the news from the landsf oik. He had watched the Danish fleet 
 along the shore as far as Blakeney. But when they came to the 
 isle, they stood out to sea, right north-west. He, the Heron, 
 believed that they were gone for Humber Mouth. 
 
 After a while, he had heard how Hereward was come again, 
 and had sent round the war-arrow ; and it seemed to him that 
 a landless man could be in no better company ; wherefore he 
 had taken boat, and come across the deep fen. And there he 
 was, if they had need of him. 
 
 ' Need of you 1 ' said Hereward, wlio had heard of the deed at 
 Wrokesham Bridge. ' Need of a hundred like you. But this is 
 bitter news.' 
 
 And he went in to ask counsel of Torfrida, ready to weep 
 with rage. He had disappointed — deceived his men. He had 
 drawn them into a snare. He had promised that the Danes 
 should come. How should lie look them in the face ? 
 
 ' Look them in the face ? Do that at once : now : without 
 losing a moment. Call them together and tell them all. If 
 their hearts are staunch, you may do great things without the 
 traitor earl. If their hearts fail them, you would have done 
 nothing with them worthy of yourself, had you had Norway as 
 well as Denmark at your back. At least, be true with them, as 
 your only chance of keeping them true to you.' 
 
 ' Wise, wise wife,' said Hereward, and went out and called his 
 band together, and told them every word, and all that had 
 passed since he left Calais Straits. 
 
 'And now I have deceived you, and entrapped you, andl 
 have no right to be your captain more. He that will depart in 
 peace, let him depart, before the Frenchmen close in on us on 
 every side and swallow us up at one mouthful.'
 
 xxiii HOW HEREWARD GATHERED AX ARMY 209 
 
 Not a man answered. 
 
 ' I say it again : He that will depart, let him depart.' 
 
 They stood thoughtful. 
 
 Eanald of Ramsey, drove the Wake-knot banner firm into the 
 earth, tucked up his monk's frock, and threw his long axe over 
 his shoulder, as if prejDaring for action. 
 
 Winter spoke at last. 
 
 'If all go, there are two men hei'e who stay, and fight by 
 Hereward's side as long as there is a Frenchman left on English 
 soil ; for they have sworn an oath to heaven and to 8t. Peter, 
 and that oath will they keep. What say you, Gwenoch, knighted 
 with us at Peterborough 1 ' 
 
 Gwenoch stepped to Hereward's side. 
 
 ' None shall go ! ' shouted a dozen voices. ' With Hereward 
 we will live and die. Let him lead us to Lincoln, to Notting- 
 ham — where he will. We can save England for ourselves with- 
 out the help of Danes.' 
 
 ' It is well for one at least of you, gentlemen, that you are in 
 this pleasant mind,' quoth Ranald the monk. 
 
 ' Well for all of us, thou valiant purveyor of beef and beer.' 
 
 'Well for one. For the first man that had turned to go, I 
 would have brained him witli this axe.' 
 
 'And now, gallant gentlemen,' said Hereward, 'we must take 
 new counsel, as our old has failed. Whither shall we go ? For 
 stay here, eating up the country, we must not do.' 
 
 'They say that Waltheof is in Lindsey, raising the landsfolk. 
 Let us go and join him.' 
 
 ' We can at least find what he means to do. There can be 
 no better counsel. Let us march. Only we must keep clear of 
 Lincoln as yet. I hear that Gilbert has a strong garrison there ; 
 and we are not strong enough yet to force it.' 
 
 So they rode north, and up the Roman road toward Lincoln, 
 sending out spies as they went ; and soon they had news of 
 Waltheof. News, too, that he was between them and Lincoln. 
 
 ' Then the sooner we are with him, the better : for he will 
 find himself in trouble ere long, if old Gilbert comes up with 
 him. So run your best, footmen, for forward we must get.' 
 
 And as they came up the Roman road, they were aware of a 
 great press of men in front of them, and hard fighting toward. 
 
 Some of the English would have spurred forward at once. 
 But Hereward held them back with loud reproaches. 
 
 'Will you forget all I have told you in the first skirmish, like 
 so many dogs when they see a bull ? Keep together for five 
 minutes more. The pot will not be cool before we get our sup 
 of it. I verily believe that it is Waltheof : and that Gilbert has 
 caught him already.' 
 
 As he spoke, one part of the combatants broke up, and fled 
 right and left ; and a knight in full armour galloped furiously 
 down the road right at them, followed by two or three more. 
 P H. T. w.
 
 210 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' Here comes some one very valiant or very much afeard,' 
 said Herewaixl, as the horseman rode right upon him, shouting: 
 
 ' I am the king ! ' 
 
 'Tiie king?' roared Hereward, and dropping liis lance, 
 spurred his horse forward, kicking his feet clear of the stiri-ups. 
 He caught the knight round tlie neck, dragged him over his 
 horse's tail, and fell with him to the ground. 
 
 TJie armour clashed ; the sparks flew from the old gray Roman 
 flints ; and Hereward, rolling over once, rose, and knelt upon 
 his prisoner. 
 
 ' William of Normandy ! yield or die ! ' 
 
 The knight lay still and stark. 
 
 ' liide on ! ' cried Hereward from the ground, ' Ride at 
 them and strike liard ! You will soon find out which is which. 
 This booty I must pick for myself. What are you doing 1 ' 
 roared he after his knights. 'Spread oti' the road, and keep 
 your line, as I told you, and don't override each other ! Curse 
 the hot-headed fools ! The French will scatter them like 
 sparrows. Run on, men-at-arms, to stop the French if we are 
 broken. And don't forget Guisnes field and the horses' legs. 
 Now, king, are you come to life yet ? ' 
 
 ' You have killed him,' quoth Leofric the deacon, whom Here- 
 ward had beckoned to stop with him. 
 
 ' I hope not. Lend me a knife. He is a much slighter man 
 than I fancied,' said Hei'eward, as they got his helmet off. 
 
 And when it was off, both started and stared. For they 
 had uncovered, not the beetling brow, Roman nose, and firm 
 curved lip of the Ulysses of the middle age, but the face of a 
 fair lad, with long straw - coloured hair, and soft blue eyes 
 staring into vacancy. 
 
 ' Wlio are you ? ' shouted Hereward, saying very bad words, 
 ' who come here, aping the name of king 1 ' 
 
 'Mother! Christina! Margaret! Waltheof Earl !' moaned 
 the lad, raising his head and letting it fall again. 
 
 ' It is the Atheling ! ' cried Leofric. 
 
 Hereward rose, and stood over the boy. 
 
 ' Ah ! what was I doing to handle him so tenderly ? I took 
 him for the Mamzer, and thought of a king's ransom.' 
 
 ' Do you call that tenderly 1 You have nigh pulled the 
 boy's head off.' 
 
 ' Would that I had ! Ah ! ' went on Hei-eward, apostrophis- 
 ing the unconscious Atheling, 'ah, that I had broken that 
 white neck once and for all ! To have sent thee feet fore- 
 most to Winchester, to lie by thy grandfathers and great- 
 grandfathers, and then to tell Norman William that he must 
 fight it out henceforth not with a straw malkin like thee, which 
 the very crows are not afraid to perch on, but with a cock of 
 a very different hackle, Sweyn Ulfsson, King of Denmark.' 
 
 And Hereward drew Brain-biter.
 
 XXI I r HOW HERE WARD GATHERED AN ARMY 211 
 
 ' For mercy's sake ! you will not harm the lad 1 ' 
 
 ' If I were a wise man now, and hard-hearted as wise men 
 
 should be, I should — I should ' and he played the point of 
 
 the sword backwards and forwards, nearer and nearer to the 
 lad's throat. 
 
 ' Master ! master ! ' cried Leofric, clinging to his knees ; 
 ' by all the saints ! What would Our Lady in heaven say to 
 such a deed 1 ' 
 
 ' Well, I suppose you are right. And I fear what our lady 
 at home might say likewise : and we must not do anything 
 to vex hei', you know. Well, let us do it handsomely, if we 
 must do it. Get water somewhere, in his helmet. No, you 
 need not linger. I will not cut his throat before you come 
 back.' 
 
 Leofric went off in search of water ; and Hereward knelt 
 with the Atheling's head on his knee, and on his lip a sneer 
 at all things in heaven and earth. To have that lad stand 
 between him and all his projects ; and to be forced, for 
 honour's sake, to let him stand ! 
 
 But soon his men returned, seemingly in high glee, and other 
 knights with them. 
 
 ' Hey, lads ! ' said he, ' I aimed at the falcon and shot the 
 goose. Here is Edgar Atheling prisoner. Shall we put him to 
 ransom ? ' 
 
 ' He has no money, and Malcolm of Scotland is much too wise 
 to lend him any,' said some one. And some more rough jokes 
 passed. 
 
 ' Do you know, sirs, that he who lies there is your king 1 ' 
 asked a very tall and noble-looking kniglit. 
 
 ' That do we not,' said Hereward sharply. ' There is no king 
 in England this day, as far as I know. And there will be none 
 north of the Watling Street till he be chosen in full busting, 
 and anointed at York, as well as at Winchester or London. We 
 have had one king made for us in the last forty years, and we 
 intend to make the next ourselves.' 
 
 ' And who art thou, who talkest so bold of king-making 1 ' 
 
 ' And who art thou, who askest so bold who I am ? ' 
 
 ' I am Waltheof Siwardsson, the earl, and yon is my army 
 behind me.' 
 
 ' And I am Hereward Leof ricsson, the Wake, and yon is my 
 army behind me.' 
 
 If the two champions had flown at each other's throats, and 
 their armies had followed their examjjle, simi:)ly as dogs fly at 
 each other they know not why, no one would have been 
 astonished in those unhappy times. 
 
 But it fell not out upon that wise ; for Waltheof, leaping 
 from liis horse, pulled off his helmet, and seizing Hereward by 
 both hands, cried : 
 
 ' Blessed is the day which sees again in England Hereward,
 
 212 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 who has upheld throughout all lands and seas the honour of 
 English chivalry ! ' 
 
 ' And blessed is the day in which Hereward meets the head 
 of the house of Siward where he should be, at the head of his 
 own men, in his own earldom. When I saw my friend, thy 
 brother Asbiorn Bulax, brought into the camp at Dunsinane 
 with all his wounds in front, I wept a young man's tears, and 
 said, " There ends the glory of the White-Bears' house ! " But 
 this day I say — The White-Bears' blood is risen from the grave 
 in Waltheof Siwardsson, who with his single axe kept the gate 
 of York against all the army of the French ; and who shall keep 
 against them all England, if he will be as wise as he is brave.' 
 
 Was Hereward honest in his words ? Hardly so. He wished 
 to be honest. As he looked upon that magnificent young man, 
 he ho]Ded and trusted that his words were true. But he gave a 
 second look at the face, and whispered to himself, ' Weak, weak. 
 He will be led by priests : perhaps by William himself. I must 
 be courteous : but confide 1 must not.' 
 
 The men stood round, and looked with admiration on the two 
 most splendid Englishmen then alive. Hereward had taken oif 
 his helmet likewise, and the contrast between the two was 
 as striking as the completeness of each of them in his own style 
 of beauty. It was the contrast between the slow-hound and the 
 deer-hound : each alike high-couraged and high-bred ; but the 
 former short, sturdy, cheerful, and sagacious ; the latter tall, 
 stately, melancholy, and not over wise withal. 
 
 Waltheof was a full head and shouldei-s taller than Hereward. 
 He was one of tlie tallest men of his generation, and of a 
 strength which would have been gigantic, but for the too great 
 length of neck and limb, which made him loose and slow in 
 body, as he was somewhat loose and slow in mind. An old 
 man's child, although that old man was one of the old giants, 
 there was a vein of weakness in him, which showed in the arched 
 eyebrow, the sleepy pale blue eye, the small soft mouth, the lazy 
 voice, the narrow and lofty brain over a shallow brow. His face 
 was not that of a warrior, but of a saint in a painted window ; 
 and to his own place he went, and became a saint, in his due 
 time. But that he could out-general William ; that he could 
 even manage Gospatric and his intrigues, Hereward expected as 
 little, as that his own nephews Edwin and jMorcar could do it. 
 
 'I have to thank you, noble sir,' said Waltheof languidly, 
 'for sending your knights to our rescue when we were really 
 hard bestead — I fear much by our own fault. Had they told me 
 whose men they were, I should not have spoken to you so 
 rougldy as I fear I did.' 
 
 'There is no offence. Let Englishmen speak their minds, as 
 long as Englisli land is above sea. But how did you get into 
 trouble, and with whom ? ' 
 
 Waltheof told him how he was going round the country, rais-
 
 XXIII HOW HEREWARD GATHERED AiN" ARMY 213 
 
 ing forces in the name of the Atheling, when, as they were 
 straggling along the Roman road, Gilbert of Ghent had dashed 
 out on them from a wood, cut their line in two, driven Waltheof 
 one way, and the Atheling another ; so that the Atheling had 
 only escaped by riding, as they saw, for his life. 
 
 ' Well done, old Gilbert ! ' laughed Here ward. ' You must be- 
 wai-e, my lord earl, how you venture within reach of that old 
 bear's paw.' 
 
 'Bear? By the by, Sir Hereward,' asked Waltheof, whose 
 thoughts ran loosely right and left, ' tliey told me that you 
 carried a white bear on your banner : but I only see a knot.' 
 
 ' Ah ? I have jjarted with my old bear, all save his skin ; for 
 keeping which, by the by, your house ought to have a blood 
 feud against me. I slew your great-uncle, or cousin, or some 
 other kinsman, at Gilbert's house in Scotland long ago ; and 
 since then I sleep on his skin every night, and used to carry his 
 picture in my banner all day.' 
 
 'Blood -feuds are solemn things,' said Waltheof, frowning. 
 ' Karl killed my grandfatlier Aldred at the battle of Settrington, 
 and his four sons are with the army at York now ' 
 
 ' For the love of all saints and of England, do not think of 
 avenging that ! Every man must now put away old grudges, 
 and remember that he has but one foe, William and his French- 
 men.' 
 
 'Very nobly spoken. But those sons of Karl — and I think 
 you said you had killed a kinsman of mine V 
 
 ' It was a bear, lord earl, a great white bear. Cannot you 
 understand a jest 1 Or are you going to take up tlie quarrels 
 of all white bears that are slain between here and Iceland ? 
 You will end by burning Crowland minster tlien ; for there are 
 twelve of your kinsmen's skins there, which Canute gave forty 
 years ago.' 
 
 ' Burn Crowland minster 1 St. Guthlac and all saints 
 forbid ! ' said Waltheof, crossing himself devoutly. 
 
 ' Are you a monk-monger into the bargain, as well as a dolt ? 
 A bad prospect for us, if you are,' said Hereward to liimself. 
 
 ' Ah, my dear lord king ! ' said Waltheof, ' and you are 
 recovering ? ' 
 
 ' Somewhat,' said the lad, sitting up, ' under the care of this 
 kind knight.' 
 
 ' He is a monk. Sir Atheling, and not a kniglit,' said Here- 
 ward. ' Our fen-men can wear a mail-shirt as easily as a frock, 
 and handle a twybill as neatly as a breviary.' 
 
 Waltheof shook his head. ' It is contrary to the canons of 
 Holy Church.' 
 
 'So are many things that are done in England just now. 
 Need has no master. Now, sir earl and Sir Atheling, what are 
 you going to do ? ' 
 
 Neither of them, it seemed, very well knew. They would go
 
 214 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 to York if they could get there, and join Gospatric and Marle- 
 sweyn. And certainly it was the most reasonable thing to be 
 done. 
 
 ' But if you mean to get to York, you must march after 
 another fashion than this,' said Hereward. ' See, sir earl, why 
 you were broken by Gilbert ; and why you will be broken 
 again, if this order holds. If you march your men along one of 
 
 these old Roman streets ■ By St. Mary, these Romans had 
 
 more wits than we ; for we have spoilt the roads they left us, 
 and never made a new one of our own — ■ — ' 
 
 ' They were heathens and enchanters,' — and Waltheof crossed 
 himself. 
 
 ' And conquered the world. Well — if you march along one 
 of these streets, you must ride as I rode, when I came up to 
 you. You must not let your knights go first, and your men-at- 
 arms straggle after in a tail a mile long, like a scratch pack of 
 hounds, all sizes except each others'. You must keep your foot- 
 men on the high street ; and make your knights ride in two 
 bodies, right and left, upon the wold, to protect their flanks 
 and baggage.' 
 
 ' But the knights will not. As gentlemen, they have a right 
 to the best ground.' 
 
 ' Then they may go to , whither they will go, if the French 
 
 come upon them. If they are on the flanks, and you are 
 attacked, then they can charge in right and left on the enemy's 
 flank, while the footmen make a stand to cover the waggons.' 
 
 'Yes — that is very good; I believe that is your French 
 fashion V 
 
 'It is the fashion of common sense, like all things which 
 succeed.' 
 
 ' But, you see, the knights would not submit to ride in the 
 mire.' 
 
 ' Then you must make them. What else have they horses for, 
 while honester men than they trudge on foot ?' 
 
 'Make them?' said Waltheof, with a shrug and a smile. 
 ' They are all free gentlemen, like ourselves.' 
 
 'And, like ourselves, will come to utter ruin, because every 
 one of them must needs go his own way.' 
 
 'I am glad,' said Waltheof, as they rode along, 'that you 
 called this my earldom. I hold it to be mine of course, in right 
 of my father : but the landsfolk, you know, gave it to your 
 nephew Morcar.' 
 
 'I care not to whom it is given. I care for the man who is 
 on it, to raise these landsfolk, and make them fight. You are 
 here : therefore you are earl.' 
 
 ' Yes, the powers that be are ordained by God.' 
 
 'You must not strain tliat text too far, lord earl; for the 
 only power that is, whom I see in England — worse luck for it — 
 is William the Mamzer.'
 
 XXI II HOW HEREWARD GATHERED AN ARMY 215 
 
 ' So I have often thouglit.' 
 
 'You have? As I feared !' (To himself) 'The pike will 
 have you again, gudgeon ! ' 
 
 ' He has with him the Holy Father at Rome, and therefore 
 the Blessed Apostle St. Peter of course. And — is a man right 
 in the sight of heaven, who resists them ? I only say it — but 
 where a man looks to the salvation of his own soul— he must 
 needs think thereof seriously at least.' 
 
 ' Oh, are you at that ? ' thought Hereward. ' Tout est perdu. 
 The question is, earl,' said he aloud, ' simply this. How many 
 men can you raise oft" this shire 1 ' 
 
 'I have raised— not so many as I could wish. Harold and 
 Edith's men have joined me fairly well : but your nephew, 
 Morcar's ' 
 
 ' I can command them. I have half of them here already.' 
 
 'Then — then we may raise the rest V 
 
 ' That depends, my lord earl, for whom we fight ! ' 
 
 ' For whom ? — I do not understand.' 
 
 ' Whether we fight for that lad — child Edgar — or for Sweyn 
 of Denmark, the rightful king of England.' 
 
 ' Sweyn of Denmark ! Wlio should be the rightful king, but 
 the heir of the blessed St. Edward ? ' 
 
 ' Blessed old fool ! He has done harm to us enough on earth, 
 without leaving us his second-cousin's aunt's malkins to harm 
 us after he is in heaven.' 
 
 ' Sir Hereward, Sir Hereward, I fear thou art not as good a 
 Christian as so good a kniglit should be.' 
 
 ' Christian or not, I am as good a one as my neighbours. I 
 am Leofric's son. Leofiic put Hardicanute on the throne ; 
 and your father, who was a man, helped him. You know what 
 has befallen England, since we Danes left the Danish stock at 
 Godwin's bidding, and put our necks under the yoke of Wessex 
 monks and monk -mongers. You may follow your father's 
 track, or not, as you like. I shall follow my father's, and fight 
 for Sweyn Ulffsson, and no man else.' 
 
 And I,' said WaltheofF, 'shall follow the anointed of the 
 Lord.' 
 
 'The anointed of Gospatric and two or three boys!' said 
 Hereward. 'Knights! Turn your horses' heads. Plight about 
 face all ! We are going back to the Bruneswold, to live and 
 die free Danes.' 
 
 And to Waltlieof's astonishment, wlio had never before 
 seen discipline, the kniglits wlieeled round ; the men-at arms 
 followed them ; and Waltlieof and the Atheling were left to 
 themselves on Lincoln Heath.
 
 216 HEREWARD THE WAKE ciiAi-. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 HOW ARCHBISHOr ALDKED DIED OF SORROW 
 
 In the tragedies of the next few months Hereward took no 
 part ; but they must be looked at near, in order to understand 
 somewliat of the men who were afterwards mixed up with him 
 for weal and woe. 
 
 When William went back to the South, the confederates, 
 child Edgar the Atheling, Gospatric, and their friends, had 
 come south again from Durham. It was undignified ; a con- 
 fession of weakness. If a Frenchman had likened them to mice 
 coming out when the cat went away, none could blame him. 
 But so they did ; and Asbiorn and his Danes, landing in 
 Humber-moutli, ' were met (says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) by 
 cliild Edgar and Earl Waltheof and Marlesweyn, and Earl 
 Gospatric with tlie men of Northumberland, riding and 
 marching joyfully with an immense army ; ' not having the 
 spirit of prophecy, or foreseeing those things which were 
 coming on the earth. 
 
 To them repaired Edwin and Morcar, the two young earls ; 
 Arkill and Karl, ' the great thanes ' ; or at least the four sons 
 of Karl — for accounts ditfer ; and what few else of the northern 
 nobility Tosti had left unmurdered. 
 
 The men of Northumberland received the Danes with open 
 arms. They would besiege York. They would storm tlie new 
 French keep. They would proclaim Edgar king at York. 
 
 In that keep sat two men, one of wliom knew his own mind, 
 the otlier did not. One was William Malet, knight, one of the 
 heroes of Hastings, a noble Norman, and chatelain of York 
 castle. The otlier was Archbishop Aldred. 
 
 Aldred seems to have been a man like too many more — pious, 
 and virtuous, and harmless enough, and not without worldly 
 prudence : but his prudence was of that sort which will surely 
 swim with the stream, and ' honour the powers tliat be,' if they 
 bebut prosperous enough. For after all, if success be not God, 
 it is like enough to Him in some men's eyes to do instead. So 
 Archbishop Aldred had crowned Harold Godwinsson, Avlien 
 Harold's star was in the ascendant.^ And who but Arclibisliop 
 Aldred should crown William, when his star liad cast Harold's 
 down from heaven 1 He would have crowned Satanas himself, 
 had he only proved himself king de facto — as he asserts himself 
 to be dejtire — of this wicked world. 
 
 So Aldred, who had not only crowned William, but sup- 
 
 ^ So says Florence of Worcester. The Norman chroniclers impute the 
 act to Stigand.
 
 XXIV HOW ARCHBISHOP ALDRED DIED OF SORROW 217 
 
 ported liis power north of Humber by all means lawful, sat in 
 York keep, and looked at William Malet, wondering what he 
 would do. 
 
 Malet would hold out to the last. As for the new" keep, it 
 was surely impregnable. The old walls — the Eoman walls on 
 which had floated tlie flag of Constantino the Great — were 
 surely strong enough to keep out men without battering-rams, 
 balistas, or artillery^ of any kind. What mattered Asbiorn's 
 two hundred and forty ships, and their crews of some ten or 
 fifteen thousand men 1 What mattered the tens of thousands of 
 northern men, with Gospatric at their head ? Let them rage 
 and rob round tlie walls. A messenger had galloped in from 
 William in the Forest of Dean, to tell Malet to hold out to the 
 last. He had galloped out again, bearing for answer, that the 
 Normans could hold York for a year. 
 
 But the Archbishop's heart misgave him, as from north and 
 south at once came up the dark masses of two mighty armies, 
 broke into columns, and surged against every gate of the city 
 at the same time. They had no battering train to breach the 
 ancient walls : but they had — and none knew it better than 
 Aldred — hundreds of friends inside, who would throw open to 
 them the gates. 
 
 One gate he could command from the castle towei'. His 
 face turned pale as he saw a mob of armed townsmen rushing 
 down the street towards it ; a furious scuffle with the French 
 guards ; and then, through the gateway, the open champaign 
 beyond, and a gleaming wave of axes, helms, and spears, jDOuring 
 in and u]:» the street. 
 
 'Tlie traitors!' he almost shrieked, as he turned and ran 
 down the ladder to tell Malet below. 
 
 Malet was firm, but pale as Aldred. 
 
 'We must fight to the last,' said he, as he hurried down, 
 commanding his men to sally at once en masse and clear ♦the 
 city. 
 
 The mistake was fatal. The French were entangled in the 
 narrow streets. The houses, shut to them, were opened to the 
 English and Danes ; and, overwhelmed from above, as well as 
 in front, the greater pai-t of the French garrison perished in the 
 first fight. The remnant were shut up in the castle. The 
 Danes and the English seized the liouses round, and shot from 
 the windows- at every loophole and embrasure where a French- 
 man showed himself. 
 
 '8hoot fire upon the houses ! ' said Malet. 
 
 ' You will not burn York ? O God ! is it come to this ? ' 
 
 'And why not York town, or York minster, or Home itself 
 Avith the i)ope inside it, rather than yield to barbarians 1 ' 
 
 Archbishop Aldred went into his room, and lay down on his 
 
 ^ Artilleiy is licrc used in its old English meaning for any kind of 
 v.-arlike en'rinc. Cf. 1 Samuul .\x. 40.
 
 218 IIEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 bed. Outside was the roar of the battle ; and soon, louder and 
 loudei', the roar of Hame. Tliis was the end of his timeserving 
 and king-making. And he said many prayers, and beat his 
 breast ; and then called to his clia plain for clothes, for he was 
 very cold. 'I have slain my own sheep,' he moaned, 'slain my 
 own sheep ! ' 
 
 His chaplain hapt him up in bed, and looked out of the 
 window at the fight. There was no lull, neither was there any 
 great advantage on either side. Only from the southward he 
 could see fresh bodies of Danes coming across the plain. 
 
 ' The carcase is liere, and the eagles are gathered together. 
 Fetch me the Holy Sacrament, chaplain, and God be merciful 
 to an unfaithful shepherd.' 
 
 Tlie chaplain went. 
 
 'I have slain my own sheep,' moaned the archbishop. 'I 
 have given them up to the wolves — given mine own minster, 
 and all the treasures of the saints, and — and — I am very cold.' 
 
 When the chaplain came back with the blessed Sacrament, 
 Archbishop Aldred was more than cold ; for he was already 
 dead and stift'. But William IMalet would not yield. He and 
 his Frenchmen fought day after day, with the energy of despair. 
 They asked leave to put forth the body of the archljishop ; and 
 young Waltheof, who was a pious man, insisted that leave 
 should be given. 
 
 So the archbishop's coffin was thrust fortli of the castle-gate, 
 and the monks from the abbey came and bore it away, and 
 buried it in the cathedral-church. 
 
 And then the fight went on, day after day ; and more houses 
 burned, till York was all aflame. On the eighth day the minster 
 was in a liglit low over Archbishop Aldred's new-made grave. 
 All was burnt ; minster, churches, old Roman palaces, and all 
 the glories of Constantino the Great and the mythic past. 
 
 The besiegers, hewing and hammering gate after gate, had 
 now won all Ijut the keep itself. Then Jilalet's heart failed 
 him. A wife he had, and children ; for their sake he turned 
 coward ; and fled by night, with a few men-at-arms, across the 
 burning ruins. 
 
 Then, into what once was York, the confederate earls and 
 thanes marched in triumi^h, and i:)roclaimed Edgar king — a 
 king of dust and ashes. 
 
 And where were Edwin and Morcar the meanwhile 1 It is 
 not told. Were they struggling against William at Stafford, or 
 helping Edric the Wild and liis Welshmen to besiege Chester ? 
 Probal:)ly they were aiding the insurrection, if not at these two 
 points, still at some other of their great earldoms of Mercia 
 and Chester. They seemed to triumph for a while : during the 
 autumn of 1069 the greater part of England seemed lost to 
 William. Many Normans packed up their plunder and went 
 back to France ; and those whose hearts were too stout to
 
 XXV HOW HE FOUND A WISER MAN THAN HIMSELF 219 
 
 return showed no mercy to the English, even as William showed 
 none. To crush the heart of the people by massacres, and 
 mutilations, and devastations, was the only hope of the invader : 
 and thoroughly he did his work whenever he had a chance. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 HOW HBEEWARD FOUND A WISER MAN IN ENGLAND 
 THAN HIMSELF 
 
 There have been certain men so great, that he who describes 
 them in words — much more pretends to analyse their inmost 
 feelings — must be a very great man himself, or incur the accusa- 
 tion of presumption. And such a great man was William of 
 Normandy — one of those unfathomable master-personages, who 
 must not be rashly dragged on any stage. The genius of a 
 Bulwer, in attempting to draw him, took care with a wise 
 modesty not to draw him in too much detail : to confess always 
 that there was much beneath and behind in William's character, 
 which none, even of his contemporaries, could guess. And still 
 more modest than Bulwer is this chronicler bound to be. 
 
 But one may fancy, for once in a way, what William's 
 thoughts were, when they brouglit him the evil news of York. 
 For we know what his acts were ; and he acted up to his 
 thoughts. 
 
 Hunting he was, they say, in the Forest of Dean, when first 
 he heard that all England, north of the Watling Street, had 
 broken loose, and that he was king of only half the isle. 
 
 Did he — as when, hunting in the Forest of Rouen, he got the 
 news of Harold's coronation — play with his bow, stringing and 
 unstringing it nervously, till he had made up his mighty mind ? 
 Then, did he go home to his lodge, and there spread on the 
 rough oak board a parchment map of England, which no child 
 would deign to learn from now, but was then good enough to 
 guide armies to victory, because the eyes of a great general 
 looked upon it 1 
 
 As he pored over tlie map, by tlie light of a bog-deal torch or 
 rush candle, what would he see upon it 1 
 
 Three separate blazes of insurrection, from north-west to 
 east, along the Watling >Street. 
 
 At Chester, Edric, ' the wild Thane,' who, according to 
 Domesday-book, had lost vast lands in Slu'opshire ; Algitha, 
 Harold's widow ; and Blethwallon and all his Welsh ; ' the 
 white mantles' swarming along Chester streets, not as usually, 
 to tear aTid ravage like the wild cats of their own rocks, but 
 fast friends by blood with Aldytha, ouce their queen on Pen-
 
 220 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 iiiaenmawr.^ Edwin, the young earl, Algitha's brother, Here- 
 ward's nephew — he must l)e with them too, if he were a man. 
 
 Eastward, round Stafford, and the centre of Mercia, another 
 blaze of furious English valour. Morcar, Edwin's brother, must 
 be there, as their earl, if he too was a man. 
 
 Then in the fens and Kesteven. What meant this news, that 
 Hereward of St. Omer was come again, and an army with him ? 
 That he was levying war on all Frenchmen, in the name of 
 Svveyn, King of Denmark and of England ? He is an outlaw, a 
 desperado, a boastful swash-buckler, thought William, it may 
 be, to himself. He found out, in after years, that he had mis- 
 taken liis man. 
 
 And north, at York, in the rear of those three insurrections, 
 lay Gospatric, Waltheof, and Marlesweyn, with the Northum- 
 brian host. Durham was lost, and Comyn burnt therein But 
 York, so boasted William Malet, could hold out for a year. He 
 should not need to hold out for so long. 
 
 And last, and worst of all, hung on the eastern coast the 
 mighty fleet of Sweyn, who claimed England as liis of right. 
 The foe whom he had most feared ever since he set foot on 
 English soil, a collision with whom had been inevitable all 
 along, was come at last : but where would he strike his blow ? 
 
 William knew, doubt it not, that the Danes had been defeated 
 at Norwich : he knew, doubt it not, for his spies told him 
 everything, that they had purposed entering the Wash. To 
 prevent a junction between them and Hereward was impossible. 
 He must prevent a junction between them and Edwin and 
 Morcar. 
 
 He determined, it seems — for he did it — to cut the English 
 line in two, and marched upon Stafford as its centre. 
 
 But all records of these campaigns are fragmentary, confused, 
 contradictory. The Normans fought, and had no time to write 
 history. Tlie English, beaten and crushed, died and left no 
 sign. The only chroniclers of the time are monks. And little 
 could Ordericus Vitalis, or Florence of Worcester, or he of 
 Peterborough, faithful as lie was, who lilled up the sad pages of 
 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle — little could they see or understand 
 of the masterly strategy which was conquering all England for 
 Norman monks, in order that they, following the army like 
 black ravens, miglit feast tliemselves upon the prey which 
 others won for tliem. To them the death of an abbot, the 
 squabbles of a monastery, the journey of a prelate to Ptome, are 
 more important tlian the manceuvres which decided the life and 
 freedom of tens of tiiousands. 
 
 So all we know is, that William fell upon Morcar's men at 
 Stafford, and smote them with a great destruction ; rolling tlie 
 
 ^ See the admirable description of the tragedy of Penmaenmawr, in 
 Bulwer's Harold.
 
 XXV HOAV HE FOUXD A WISER MAN THAN HIMSELF 221 
 
 fugitives west and east, toAvard Edwin, perhaps, at Chester, 
 certainly toward Hereward in the fens. 
 
 At Stafford met him the fugitives from York, j\Ialet, his 
 wife, and children, with the dreadful news that the Danes had 
 joined Gospatric, and that York was lost. 
 
 William burst into fiendish fury. He accused the wretched 
 men of treason. He cut off tlieir hands, thrust out their eyes ; 
 threw Malet into jDrison, and stormed on northward. 
 
 He lay at Pontefract for three Aveeks. The bridges over the 
 Aire were broken down. But at last he crossed and marched 
 on York, 
 
 No man opposed him. The Danes were gone down to the 
 Humber. Gosijatric and Waltheof's hearts had failed them ; 
 and they had retired before the great captain. 
 
 Florence of Worcester says that William bought Earl Asbiorn 
 off, giving him much money, and leave to forage for his fleet 
 along the coast. 
 
 Doubtless William would have so done if he could. Doubt- 
 less the angry and disappointed English raised such accusations 
 against the earl, believing them to be true. But is not the 
 simpler cause of Asbiorn's conduct to be found in the plain 
 facts ? — That he had sailed from Denmark to put Sweyn, his 
 brother, on the throne. He found on his arrival that Gospatric 
 and Waltheof had seized it in the name of Edgar Atheling. 
 What liad he to do more in England, save what he did ? — go out 
 into the Humber, and winter safely there, waiting till Sweyn 
 should come with reinforcements in the spring 1 
 
 Then William had his revenge : he destroyed, in the language 
 of Scripture, 'the life of the land.' Far and wide the farms 
 were burnt over their owners' heads, the growing crops upon 
 the ground ; the horses were houghed, the cattle driven off; 
 while of human deatli and misery tliere was no end. Yorkshire 
 and much of the neighbouring counties lay waste for the next 
 nine years. It did not recover itself fully till several genera- 
 tions after. 
 
 The Danes had boasted that they would keep their Yule at 
 York. William kept his Yule there instead. He sent to Win- 
 chester for the regalia of the Confessor ; and in the midst of the 
 blackened ruins, while the English for miles around wandered 
 starving in the snows, feeding on carrion, on rats and mice, and 
 at last upon each otiier's corpses, he sat in his royal roljes, and 
 gave away the lands of Edwin and Morcar to his liegemen. 
 And thus, like the Romans, from whom lie deiived both his 
 strategy and his civilisation, he ' made a solitude, and called it 
 peace.' 
 
 He did not give away Waltheof's lands ; and only part of 
 Gospatric's. He wanted Gospatric ; he loved Waltheof, and 
 wanted him likewise. 
 
 Therefore through the desert which he himself had made he
 
 222 IIEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 forced his way up to the Tees a second time, over snow-covered 
 moors ; and this time 8t. Cuthbert sent no fog, being satisfied 
 presumably with William's orthodox attachment to St. Peter 
 and Rome ; so the Conqueror treated quietly with Waltheof 
 and Gospatric, who lay at Durham. 
 
 Gospatric got an earldom, from Tees to Tyne ; and paid 
 down for it much hard money and treasure ;— bought it, in fact, 
 he said. 
 
 Waltheof got back his earldom, and much of Morcar's. From 
 the fens to the Tees was to be liis province. 
 
 And then, to the astonishment alike of Normans and English, 
 and, it may be, of himself, he man-ied Judith, the Conqueror's 
 niece ; and became once more William's loved and trusted 
 friend — or slave. 
 
 It seems inexplicable at first sight. Inexplicable, save as an 
 instance of that fascination which the strong sometimes exer- 
 cise over the weak. 
 
 Then William turned south-west. Edwin, wild Edric, the 
 dispossessed thane of Shropshire, and the wilder Blethwallon 
 and his Welshmen, were still harrying and slaying. They had 
 just attacked Shrewsbury. William would come upon them by 
 a way they thought not of. 
 
 So over the backbone of England , by way probably of 
 Halifax or Huddersfield ; through pathless moors and bogs, 
 down towards the jDlains of Lancashire and Cheshire, he pushed 
 over and on. His soldiers from the plains of sunny France 
 could not face the cold, the rain, the morasses, the hideous 
 gorges, the valiant peasants — still the finest and shrewdest race 
 of men in all England — who set upon them in wooded glens, or 
 rolled stones on them from the limestone crags. They prayed 
 to be dismissed, to go home. 
 
 ' Cowards might go back,' said William ; ' he should go on.' 
 If he could not ride, he would walk. Whoever lagged, he would 
 be foremost. And cheered by his example, the army at last 
 debouched upon the Cheshire fiats. 
 
 Then he fell upon Edwin, as he had fallen upon Morcar. He 
 drove the wild Welsh through the pass of Mold, and up into 
 their native hills. He laid all waste with fire and sword for 
 many a mile, as Domesday -book testifies to this day. He 
 strengthened the walls of Chester; trampled out the last embers 
 of rebellion ; and went down south to Salisbury, King of England 
 once again. 
 
 Why did he not push on at once against the one rebellion left 
 alight, that of Hereward and his fen-men ? 
 
 It may be that he understood him and them. It may be that 
 he meant to treat with Sweyn, as he had done, if tlie story be 
 true, with Asbiorn. It is more likely that he could do no more ; 
 tliat his army, after so swift and long a campaign, required rest. 
 It may be that the time of service of many of his mercenaries
 
 XXV HOW HE FOUND A WISER MAN THAN HIMSELF 223 
 
 was expired. Be that as it may, lie mustered them at Old 
 Sarum — the Roman British burgli whicli still stands on the 
 down side— and rewarded them, according to their deserts, from 
 the lands of tlie conquered English. 
 
 How soon Hereward knew all this, or how he passed the 
 winter of 1070-71, we cannot tell. But to him it must have been 
 a winter of bitter perplexity. 
 
 It was impossible to get information from Edwin ; and news 
 from York was almost impossible to get ; for Gilbert of Ghent 
 stood between him and it. 
 
 He felt himself now pent in, all but trapped. Since he had 
 set foot last in England ugly things had risen up, on which he 
 had calculated too little, namely, Norman castles. A whole 
 ring of tliem in Norfolk and Suffolk cut him off from the south. 
 A castle at Cambridge closed the soutli end of the fens ; anotlier 
 at Bedford, the western end ; while Lincoln castle to the north 
 cut him off from York. 
 
 His men did not see the difficulty ; and wanted him to march 
 towards York, and clear all Lindsey and right up to the 
 Humber. 
 
 Gladly would he have done so, when he heard that the Danes 
 Avere wintering in the Humber. 
 
 'But how can we take Lincoln castle without artillery or 
 even a battering-ram V 
 
 ' Let us march past it, then, and leave it behind.' 
 'Ah, my sons,' said Hereward, laughing sadly, 'do you sup- 
 pose that the Mamzer spends Ids time— and Englishmen's life 
 and labour — in heaping up those great stone mountains, that 
 you and I may walk past them ? They are put there just to 
 prevent our walking past, unless we choose to liave the garrison 
 sallying out to attack our rear, and cut us off from home, and 
 carry off our women into the bargain, when our backs are 
 turned.' 
 
 The English swore, and declared that they had never thought 
 of that. 
 
 ' No. We drink too much ale on this side of the Channel, to 
 think of that — or of anything beside.' 
 
 ' But,' said Leofwin Prat, ' if we have no artillery, we can 
 make some.' 
 
 'Spoken like yourself, good comrade. If we only knew 
 how.' 
 
 ' I know,' said Torf rida. ' I have read of such things in books 
 of the ancients, and I have watched them making continually 
 — I little knew wjiy, or that I should ever turn engineer.' 
 
 'What is there that you do not know?' cried they all at 
 once. And Torfrida actually sliowed herself a fair practical 
 engineer. 
 
 But where was iron to come from 1 Iron for catapult-springs, 
 iron for ram-heads, iron for bolts and bars ?
 
 224 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' Torf I'ida,' said Hereward, 'you are wise. Can you use the 
 divining rod ? ' 
 
 ' Why, my knight 1 ' 
 
 ' Because there might be iron-ore in the wolds ; and if you 
 could find it by the I'od, we miglit get it up and smelt it.' 
 
 Torfrida .said humbly that she would try ; and walked with 
 the divining rod between her pretty lingers for many a mile in 
 wood and wold, wherever the ground looked red and rusty. 
 But she never found any iron. 
 
 ' We must take the tires ofi" the cart-wheels,' said Leofwin 
 Prat. 
 
 ' But how will the carts do without ? For we shall want 
 them if we marcli.' 
 
 ' In Provence, whei'e I was born, the wheels were made out 
 of one round piece of wood. Could we not cut wheels like 
 them 1 ' asked Torfrida. 
 
 ' You are the wise woman as usual,' said Hereward. 
 
 Torfrida burst into a violent flood of tears, no one knew 
 why. 
 
 There came over her a vision of the creaking carts, and the 
 little sleek oxen, dove -coloured and dove-eyed, with their 
 canvas mantles tied neatly on to keep off heat and flies, 
 lounging on with their light load of vine and olive-twigs 
 beneath the blazing southern sun. When should she see the 
 sun once more ? She looked up at the brown branches overhead, 
 howling in the December gale, and down at the brown fen 
 below, dying into mist and darkness as the low December sun 
 died down ; and it seemed as if her life was dying down witli it. 
 There would be no more sun, and no more summers, for her 
 upon this earth. 
 
 None certainly for her poor old mother. Her southern blood 
 was chilling more and more beneath the bitter sky of Kesteven. 
 The fall of the leaf had brought with it rheumatism, ague, and 
 many miseries. Cunning old leech-wives treated the French 
 lady with tonics ; mugwort, and bogbean, and good wine enow. 
 But, like David of old, she got no heat ; and before Yule-tide 
 came, she had prayed lierself safely out of this world, and into 
 the woi'ld to come. And Torfrida's heart was the more light 
 when she saw her go. 
 
 She was absorbed utterly in Hereward and his plots. She 
 lived for nothing else, hardly even for her cliild ; and clung to 
 her husband's fortunes all the more flercely, the more desperate 
 they seemed. 
 
 So that small band of gallant men laboured on, waiting for 
 the Danes, and trying to make artillery and take Lincoln keep. 
 And all tlie while, so unequal is fortune Avhen Clod wills — 
 throughout the Southern Weald, from Hastings to Hind-head, 
 every copse glared with charcoal heaps, every glen was burrowed 
 with iron diggings, every hammer-pond stamped and gurgled
 
 XXV HOW HE FOUND A WISER MAN THAN HIMSELF 225 
 
 night and day, smelting and forging English iron, whei'ewith 
 the Frenchmen might slay Englishmen. 
 
 William — though perhaps he knew it not liimself — had, in 
 securing Sussex and Surrey, secured the then great ironlield of 
 England, and an unlimited supply of weajjons : and to that cir- 
 cumstance, it may be, as much as to any other, the success of 
 his campaigns may be due. 
 
 It must have been in one of these December days that a 
 handful of knights came through the Bruneswold, mud and 
 blood-bespattered, urging on tired horses, as men desperate and 
 foredone. And the foremost of them all, when he saw Hereward 
 at the gate of Bourne, leaped down, and threw his arms round 
 his neck, and burst into bitter weeping. 
 
 ' Hereward, I know you, though you know me not. I am 
 your nephew, Morcar Algarsson ; and all is lost.' 
 
 As the winter ran on, other fugitives came in, mostly of rank 
 and family. At last Edwin himself came, young and fair, like 
 Llorcar ; he who should have been the Conqueror's son-in- 
 law ; for whom his true-love pined, as he pined, in vain. Where 
 were Sweyn and his Danes ? Whither should they go till he 
 came ? 
 
 ' To Ely,' answered Hereward. 
 
 Whether or not it was his wit which lirst seized on the military 
 capabilities of Ely is not told. Leofric the deacon, who is likely 
 to know best, says that there were men already there holding 
 out against William ; and that they sent for Hereward. But it 
 is not clear from his words, whether they were fugitives, or 
 merely bold Abbot Thurstan and his monks. 
 
 It is but probable, nevertheless, that Hereward, as the only 
 man among the fugitives who ever showed any ability whatso- 
 ever, and who was also the only leader (save Morcar) connected 
 with the fen, conceived the famous ' Camp of Refuge,' and made 
 it a formidable fact. Be that as it may, Edwin and Morcar went 
 to Ely ; and there joined an Earl Tosti (according to Richard of 
 Ely), unknown to history ; a Siward Barn, ' the boy or the 
 chieftain,' who had been dispossessed of lands in Lincolnshire ; ^ 
 and other valiant and noble gentlemen — the last wrecks of the 
 
 ^ Ordericus Vitalis says that lie and his brother Aldred were ' sons of 
 Ethelgar, the late king's grandson.' In another place he makes Etlielgar 
 a ' cousin of King Edward.' Mr. Forester, in his notes to Ordericus Vitalis, 
 says (with probability) that the ' late king ' may have been Edward the 
 Elder, who had a son named Ailward Snow, whose son Algar (Ethelgar) 
 was probably the father of Siward Barn and Aldred, as well as of Brihtric, 
 who had the largest possessions in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and 
 Shropshire. If so, we have a fresh illustration of the fact that the lands 
 of England had, before the Conquest, been accumulated in the hands of an 
 aristocracy numerically small, and closely interrelated in blood ; a state 
 of things sufficient in itself to account for tlie easy victory of the French. 
 
 Q H. T. w.
 
 226 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 English aristocracy. And there they sat in Abbot Thurstan's 
 hall, and waited for Sweyn and the Danes. 
 
 But the worst Job's messenger who, during that evil winter 
 and_.spring, came into the fen, was Bishop Egelwin of Durham. 
 He it was, most probably, who brought the news of Berkshire 
 laid waste with fire and sword. He it was, most certainly, who 
 brought the worse news still, that Gospatric and Waltheof were 
 gone over to the king. He was at Durham, seemingly, when he 
 saw that, and fled for his life, ere evil overtook him : for to 
 yield to William that brave bishop had no mind. 
 
 But when Here ward heard that Waltheof was married to the 
 Conqueror's niece, he smote liis hands together, and cursed 
 him, and the mother who bore him to Siward the Stout. 
 
 ' Could thy father rise from the grave he would split thy 
 craven head in the very lap of the Frenchwoman.' 
 
 ' A hard lap will he find it, Hereward,' said Torf rida. ' I know 
 her — wanton, false, and vain. Heaven grant he do not rue the 
 day he ever saw her ! ' 
 
 'Heaven grant he may rue it ! Would that her bosom were 
 knives and tish hooks, like that of the statue in the fairy tale. 
 See what he has done for us ! He is earl, not only of his own 
 lands, but of poor Morcar's too, and of half his earldom. He is 
 Earl of Huntingdon, of Cambridge, they say— of this ground on 
 which we stand. What right have I here now ? How can I call 
 on a single man to arm, as I could in Morcar's name ? I am an 
 outlaw here, and a robber ; and so is every man with me. And 
 do you think that William did not know that ? He saw well 
 enough what he was doing when he set up that great brainless 
 idol as earl again. He wanted to split up the Danish folk, and 
 he has done it. The Northumbrians will stick to Waltheof. 
 They think him a mighty hero, because he held York gate alone 
 with his own axe against all the French.' 
 
 ' Well, that was a gallant deed.' 
 
 ' Pish ! we are all gallant men, we English. It is not courage 
 that we want, it is brains. So the Yorkshire and Lindsey men, 
 and the Nottingham men too, will go with Waltheof. And 
 round here, and all through the fens, every coward, every 
 prudent man even — every man who likes to be within the law, and 
 to feel his head safe on his shoulders — no blame to him — will 
 draw off from me for fear of this new earl, and leave us to end 
 as a handful of outlaws. I see it all. And William sees it all. 
 He is wise enough, the Mamzer, and so is his father Belial, to 
 whom he will go home some day. Yes, Torfrida,' he went on 
 after a joause, more gently, but in a tone of exquisite sadness, 
 ' you are right, as you always are. I am no match for that man. 
 I see it now.' 
 
 'I never said that. Only — — ' 
 
 ' Oi^ly you told me again and again that lie was the wisest 
 man on earth.'
 
 XXVI HOW HEREWARD FULFILLED HIS WORDS 2-27 
 
 ' And yet, for that very reason, I bade you win glory without 
 end by defying tlie wisest man on earth.' 
 
 ' And do you bid me do it still 1 ' 
 
 ' God knows wliat I bid,' said Torf rida, bursting into tears. 
 ' Let me go pray, for I never needed it more.' 
 
 Hereward watched her kneeling, as he sat moody, all but 
 desperate. Then he glided to her side and said gently : 
 
 ' Teach me how to pray, Torf rida. I can say a pater or an 
 ave. But that does not comfort a man's heart, as far as I could 
 ever find. Teach me to pray, as you and my mother pray.' 
 
 And she put her arms round the wild man's neck, and tried 
 to teach him, like a little child. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 HOW HEREWARD FULFILLED HIS WORDS TO THE PRIOR OF 
 THE GOLDEN BOROUGH 
 
 In tlie course of that winter died good Abbot Brand. Hereward 
 went over to see him, and found him moaning to liimself texts 
 of Isaiah, and confessing the sins of his people. 
 
 'Woe to the vineyard that bringetli forth wild grapes. Woe 
 to those that join house to house and field to field — like us, and 
 the Godwinssons, and every man that could— till we stood alone 
 in the land. Many houses, great and fair, shall he without in- 
 habitants. It is all foretold in holy writ, Hereward, my son. 
 Woe to those who rise early to fill themselves with strong drink, 
 and the tabret and harp are in their feasts : but they regard 
 not the works of tlie Lord. Therefore my people are gone into 
 captivity, because they have no knowledge. Ah — those French- 
 men have knowledge, and too much of it : wliile we have brains 
 filled with ale instead of justice. Therefore hell hath enlarged 
 
 herself, and opened her mouth without measure and all go 
 
 down into it, one by one. And dost thou think thou slialt 
 escape, Hereward, thou stout-hearted 1 ' 
 
 ' I neither know nor care : but this I know, tliat whitherso- 
 ever I go, I sliall go sword in hand.' 
 
 ' They that take the sword shall perish by the sword,' said 
 Brand, and blessed Hereward and died. 
 
 A week after came news that Thorold of [Malmesbury was 
 coming to take the abbey of Peterborough, and had got as far 
 as Stamford, with a riglit royal train. 
 
 Then Hereward sent Abbot Thorold word tliat if he or liis 
 Frenchmen put foot into Peterborough, he Hereward would 
 burn it over their heads. And tliat if he rode a mile beyond 
 Stamford town, he sliould walk into it barefoot in liis shirt. 
 
 Whereon Thorold abode at Stamford, and kept up liis spirits by 
 singing the song of Poland, wliicli some say he himself composed.
 
 228 HEREWARD THE WAKE chai'. 
 
 A week after that, and tlie Danes were come. 
 
 A mighty fleet, with Sweyn Ulftsson at their liead, went up 
 the Ouse towards Ely. Anotlier, with Asbiorn at their head, 
 having joined them off tlie mouth of the Humber, sailed (it 
 seems) up the Nene. All the chivalry of Denmark and Ireland 
 was come ; and with it all the chivalry, and the unchivalry, of 
 the Baltic shores.— Vikings from Jomsburg and Arkona, Gott- 
 landers from Wisby ; and witli them their lieathen tributaries, 
 "Wends, Fnins, Esthonians, Courlanders, Russians from Novo- 
 gorod and the heart of Holmgard, Letts who still offered, in the 
 forest of Eugen, human victims to the four-headed Swantowit ; 
 foul hordes in sheepskins and primeval filth, who might have 
 been scented from Hunstanton Ness ever since their ships had 
 rounded the Skaw. 
 
 Hereward hurried to them with all his men. He was 
 anxious, of course, to prevent their plundering the landsfolk as 
 they went— aiid that the savages from the Baltic shore would 
 certainly do, if they could, however reasonable the Danes, Ork- 
 neymen, and Irish Ostmen might be. 
 
 Food, of course, they must take where they could find it ; 
 but outrages were not a necessary, though a too common, 
 adjunct to the process of emptying a farmer's granaries. 
 
 He found the Danes in a dangerous mood ; sulky and dis- 
 gusted, as they had good right to be. They liad gone to the 
 Humber, and found nothing but ruin ; the land waste ; the 
 French holding both the shores of tlie Humber ; and Asbiorn 
 cowering in Humber-mouth, liardly able to feed his men. They 
 had come to conquer England, and nothing was left for them to 
 conquer but a few peat -bogs. Then they would have what 
 there was in them. Every one knew that gold grew up in 
 England out of the ground, wherever a monk put his foot. And 
 they would plunder Crowlaud. Their forefathers had done it, 
 and had fared none the worse. English gold they would have, 
 if they could not get fat English manors. 
 
 ' No ! not Crowland ! ' said Hereward. Any place but Crow- 
 land, endowed and honoured by Canute the Great— Crowland, 
 whose abbot was a Danish nobleman, whose monks were Danes 
 to a man, of their own flesh and blood. Caimte's soul would 
 rise up in Valhalla and curse them, if they took the value of a 
 penny from St. Guthlac. St. Guthlac was their good friend. 
 He would send them bread, meat, ale, all they needed but 
 woe to the man who set foot upon his ground 
 
 Hereward sent off" messengers to Crowland, warning all to be 
 ready to escape into the fens ; and entreating Ulfketyl to empty 
 his storehouses into his barges, and send food to the Danes ere 
 a day was past. And Ulfketyl worked hard and well, till a 
 string of barges wound its way through the fens, laden with 
 beeves and bread, and ale-barrels in plenty ; and with monks 
 too, who welcomed the Danes as their brethren, talked to them
 
 XXVI HOW HEREWARD FULFILLED HIS WORDS 229 
 
 in their own tongue, blessed them in St. Gutlilac's name as the 
 saviours of England ; and then Avent liome again, chanting so 
 sweetly their thanks to heaven for their safety, that the wild 
 Vikings were awed, and agreed that St. Guthlac's men were wise 
 folk and open-hearted, and that it was a shame to do them harm. 
 
 But plunder they must have. 
 
 'And plunder you shall have !' said Hereward, as a sudden 
 thought struck him. ' I will show you the way to the Golden 
 Borough — the richest minster in England ; and all the treasures 
 of the Golden Borough shall be yours, if you will treat English- 
 men as friends, and spare the people of the fens.' 
 
 It was a great crime in the eyes of men of tliat time. A 
 great crime, taken simply, in Hereward's own eyes. But 
 necessity has no law. Something the Danes must have, and 
 ought to have ; and St. Peter's gold was better in their purses, 
 than in that of Thorold and his French monks. 
 
 So he led them up the fens and rivers, till they came into the 
 old Nene, which men call Catwater and jMuscal now. 
 
 As he passed Nomanslandhirne, and the mouth of the Por- 
 sand river, he trembled, and trusted that the Danes did not 
 know that they were within thi-ee miles of St. Guthlac's sanc- 
 tuary. But they went on ignorant, and up the Muscal till they 
 saw St. Peter's towers on the wooded rise, and behind them the 
 great forest which is now Milton Pai'k. 
 
 There were two parties in Peterborough minster ; a smaller 
 faction of stout-hearted English ; a larger one which favoured 
 William and the French customs, with Prior Herluin at their 
 head. Herluin wanted not for foresight, and he knew that evil 
 was coming on him. He knew that the Danes were in the fen. 
 He knew that Hereward was with them. He knew that they 
 had come to Crowland. Hereward could never mean to let 
 them sack it. Peterborough must be their point. And Herluin 
 set his teeth, like a bold man determined to abide the worst, 
 and barred and barricaded every gate and door. 
 
 That niglit a hapless churchwarden — Ywar was his name — 
 might liave been seen galloping through Milton and Castor 
 Hanglands, and on by Barnack quarries over Southorpe heath, 
 with saddlebags of huge size stutled with 'gospels, mass-robes, 
 cassocks, and otlier garments, and such other small things as he 
 could carry away.' And he came before day to Stamford, where 
 Abbot Thorold lay at his ease in his inn with his hommes 
 d'armes asleep in the hall. 
 
 And the churchwarden knocked tliem up, and drew Abbot 
 Thorold's curtains witli a face such as his wlio 
 
 'ih'ew Priam's curtain in tlie dfad of night, 
 Anil would have told him, half his Troy was burred' ; 
 
 and told Abbot Thorold tiiat the monks of Peterborough had
 
 230 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 sent him ; and that unless he saddled and rode his best that 
 niglit, with his nieinie of men-at-arms, his Golden Borough 
 would be even as Troy town hj morning light. 
 
 'A moi honnnes d'armes ! ' shouted Thorold, as he used to 
 shout whenever he wanted to scourge his wretched English 
 monks at Malmesbury into some French fashion. 
 
 The men leaped up and poured in, growling. 
 
 ' Take me this monk, and kick him into the street for wak- 
 ing me with such news.' 
 
 'But, gracious lord, the heathen will surely burn Peter- 
 borough ; and folks said that you were a mighty man of war.' 
 
 ' So I am ; but if I were lloland, Oliver, and Turpin rolled 
 into one, how am I to fight Hereward and the Danes with forty 
 men-at-arms ? Answer me that, thou dunder-headed English 
 porker.' 
 
 So Ywar was kicked into the cold, while Thorold raged up 
 and down his chamber in mantle and slipi^ers, wringing his 
 hands over the treasure of the Golden Borough, snatched from 
 his fingers just as he was closing them upon it. 
 
 That night the monks of Peterborougli praj'ed in the minster 
 till the long hours passed into the short. The corrodiers, and 
 servants of the monastery, fled from the town outside into the 
 !Milton woods. The monks prayed on inside till an hour after 
 matins. When the first fiusli of the summer's dawn began to 
 show in the north-eastern sky, they heard, mingling with their 
 own chant, another chant, which Peterborough had not heard 
 since it was Medehampstead, three hundred years ago ; — the 
 terrible Yvich-hey-saa-saa — the war-song of the Vikings of the 
 north. 
 
 Their chant stojiped of itself. With blanched faces and 
 trembling knees, they fled, regardless of all discipline, up into 
 the minster tower ; and from the leads looked out north-east- 
 ward on the fen. 
 
 The first rays of the summer sun^ were just .streaming 
 over tlie vast sheet of emerald, and glittering ujoon the winding 
 river ; and on a winding line, too, seemingly endless, of scarlet 
 coats and shields, black hulls, gilded jooops and vanes and 
 beak-heads, and the flash and foam of innumerable oars. 
 
 And nearer and louder came the oar-roll, like thunder 
 working up from tlie east ; and mingled with it, that grim yet 
 laughing Heysaa, which besj^oke in its very note the revelry of 
 slaughter. 
 
 The ships had all their sails on deck. But as they came nearer, 
 the monks could see the banners of the two foremost vessels. 
 
 The one was the red and white of the terrible Dannebrog. 
 The othei', the scarcely less terrible Wake-knot of Hereward. 
 
 ' He will burn the minster ! He has vowed to do it. As a 
 
 ^ 'Tliis befell on the fourth clay of the Nones of June.' So says the 
 Anglo-Sa.xon Chronicle ; from wliich the details of the yack are taken.
 
 XXVI HOW HEREAVARD FULFILLED HLS WORDS 231 
 
 child he vowecl, and he must do it. In this very minster the 
 fiend entered into him and possessed him ; and to this minster 
 has the fiend brought him back to do his will. Satan, my 
 brethren, having a special spite (as must needs be) against 8t. 
 Peter, rock and pillar of the Holy Church, chose out and in- 
 spired this man, even from his mother's womb, that he might be 
 the foe and robber of St. Peter, and the hater of all who, like 
 my humility, honour him, and strive to bring this English land 
 in due obedience to that blessed Apostle. Bring forth the relics, 
 my brethren. Bring forth, above all things, those filings of St. 
 Peter's own chains, the special glory of our monastery — and 
 perhaps its safeguard this day.' 
 
 Some such bombast would any monk of tliose days have 
 talked in like case. And yet, so strange a thing is man, he 
 might have been withal, like Herluin, a shrewd and valiant man. 
 
 Tliey brought out all the relics. They brought out the filings 
 themselves, in a box of gold. They held them out over the 
 walls at the ships, and called on all tlie saints to whom they 
 belonged. But they stopped that line of scarlet, black, and gold, 
 as much as their si^iritual descendants stop the lava-stream of 
 Vesuvius, when they hold out similar matters at them, with a 
 hope unchanged by the experience of eight hundred years. The 
 Heysaa rose louder and nearer. The Danes were coming. And 
 they came. 
 
 And all the while a thousand skylarks rose from ofi" the fen, 
 and chanted their own chant aloft, as if appealing to heaven 
 against that which man's greed, and man's rage, and man's 
 superstition, had made of this fair earth of God. 
 
 The relics had been brought out : but, as they would not 
 work, the only thing to be done was to put them back again and 
 hide them safe, lest they should bow down like Bel and stoop 
 like Nebo, and be caiTied, like them, into captivity themselves, 
 being worth a very large sum of money in the eyes of the more 
 Christian part of the Danish host. 
 
 Then to hide the treasures as well as they could ; which (says 
 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) they hid somewhere in the steeple. 
 
 The Danes were landing now. The shout which they gave as 
 they leaped on shore made the hearts of the poor monks sink 
 low. Would they be murdered, as well as robbed 1 Perhaps 
 not — probably not. Hereward would see to that. And some 
 wanted to capitulate. 
 
 Herluin would not liear of it. They were safe enough. St. 
 Peter's relics might not have worked a miracle on the spot : 
 but they must have done something. St. Peter had been 
 appealed to on his honour, and on his honour he must surely 
 take the matter up. At all events, the walls and gates were 
 strong, and the Danes had no artillery. Let them howl and 
 rage round the holy place, till Abbot Thorold and the French- 
 men of the country rose and drove them to their ships.
 
 232 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 In that last thought the cunning Frenchman was not so far 
 wrong. The Danes pushed up through the little town, and to 
 the minster gates : but entrance was impossible ; and they 
 prowled round and round like raging wolves about a winter 
 steading : but found no crack of entry. 
 
 Prior Herluin grew bold ; and coming to the leads of the 
 gateway tower, looked over cautiously, and liolding up a certain 
 most sacred emblem — not to be profaned in these pages — 
 cursed them in the name of his whole Pantheon. 
 
 ' Alia, Herluin ? Are you there ? ' asked a short square man 
 in gay armour. ' Have you forgotten the peatstack outside 
 Bolldyke Gate, and how you bade light it under me thirty years 
 since ? ' 
 
 ' Thou art Winter 1 ' and the prior uttered what would be 
 considered from any but a churchman's lips a blasphemous and 
 bloodthirsty curse. 
 
 ' Aha ? That goes like rain off a duck's back to one who has 
 been a minster scholar in his time. You ! Danes ! Ostmen ! 
 down ! If you shoot at that man, I'll cut your heads off. He 
 is the oldest foe I have in tlie woi'ld, and the only one who ever 
 hit me without my hitting him again ; and nobody shall touch 
 him but me. So down bows, I say.' 
 
 The Danes — humorous all of them — saw that there Avas a jest 
 toward, and perhaps some earnest too, and joined in jeering the 
 prior. 
 
 Herluin had ducked his head behind the parapet ; not from 
 cowardice, but simply because he had on no mail ; and might be 
 shot any moment. But when he heard Winter forbid them to 
 touch him, he lifted up his head, and gave his old pupil as good 
 as he brought. 
 
 With his sharp swift French priest's tongue he sneered, he 
 jeered, he scolded, he argued ; and then threatened. Suddenly 
 changing his tone, in words of real eloquence he appealed to 
 the superstitions of his hearers. He threatened them with 
 supernatural vengeance. He set before them all the terrors of 
 the unseen world. 
 
 Some of them began to slink away frightened. St. Peter was 
 an ill man to have a blood feud with. 
 
 Winter stood, laughing and jeering in return, for full ten 
 minutes. At last — ' I asked, and you have not answered : have 
 you forgotten the old peatstack outside Bolldyke Gate 1 For if 
 you have. The Wake has not. He has piled it against the gate, 
 and it should be burnt through by this time. Go and see.' 
 
 Herluin disappeared with a curse. 
 
 ' Now, you sea-cocks,' said Winter, springing up. ' We'll to 
 the Bolldyke Gate, and all start fair.' 
 
 Tlie Bolldyke Gate was on fire ; and more, so were the 
 suburbs. There was no time to save them, as Hereward would 
 gladly have done, for the sake of the corrodiers. They must
 
 XXVI HOW HEREWARD FULFILLED HIS WORDS 233 
 
 go :— on to the Bolldyke Gate. Who cared to put out flames 
 behind him, with all the treasures of Golden IJorough before 
 him ? In a few minutes all the town was alight. In a few 
 minutes more, the monastery likewise. 
 
 A fire is detestable enough at all times, but most detestable 
 by day. At night it is customary ; a work of darkness which 
 lights up the dark ; picturesque, magnificent, with a fitness 
 Tartarean and diabolic. But under a glaring sun, amid green 
 fields and blue skies, all its wickedness is revealed without its 
 beauty. You see its works, and little more. The flame is 
 hardly noticed. All that is seen is a canker eating up God's 
 works, breaking the bones of its prey with a horrible cracking 
 uglier than all stage-scene glares, cruelly and shamelessly under 
 the very eye of the great, honest, kindly sun. 
 
 And that felt Hereward, as he saw Peterborough burn. He 
 could not put his thoughts into words, as men of tliis day can : 
 so much the better for him, perhaps. But he felt all the more 
 intensely — as did men of his day — the tilings he could not 
 speak. All he said was, aside to Winter — 
 
 ' It is a dark job. I wish it had been done in the dark.' And 
 Winter knew what he meant. 
 
 Then the men rushed into the Bolldyke Gate, while Hereward 
 and Winter stood and looked with their men, whom they kept 
 close together, waiting their commands. The Danes and their 
 allies cared not for the great glowing heap of peat. They cared 
 not for each other, hardly for themselves. They rushed into the 
 gap ; they thrust the glowing heap inward through the gate- 
 Avay with their lances ; tJiey thrust eacli other down into it, and 
 trampled over them to fall themselves, rising scorched and 
 withered, and yet struggling on toward the gold of the Golden 
 Borough. One savage Lett caught another round the waist, 
 and hurled him bodily into the fire, crying in his wild tongue — 
 
 ' You will make a good stepping-stone for me.' 
 
 'That is not fair,' quoth Hereward, and clove him to the 
 chine. 
 
 It was wild work. But the Golden Borough was won. 
 
 ' We must in now and save the monks,' said Hereward, and 
 dashed over the embers. 
 
 He was only just in time. In the midst of the great court 
 were all the monks, huddled together like a flock of sheep, 
 some kneeling, most weeping bitterly, after the fashion of 
 monks. 
 
 Only Herluin stood in front of them, at bay, a lofty crucifix 
 in his hand. He had no mind to weep. But with a face of calm 
 and })itter wi-ath, he ]ireferred words of peace and entreaty. 
 They were what the time needed. Therefore they should be 
 given. To-morrow he would write to Bishop Egelsin, to ex- 
 communicate with bell, book, and candle, to the lowest pit of 
 Tartarus, all who had done the deed.
 
 234 HEREAVARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 But to-day he spoke them fair. However, his faii^ speeches 
 profited little, not being understood by a horde of Letts and 
 Finns, who howled and bayed at him, and tried to tear the 
 crucifix from his hand : but feared ' The white Christ.' 
 
 They were already gaining courage from their own yells ; in 
 a moment more blood Avould have been shed, and then a general 
 massacre must liave ensued. 
 
 Hereward saw it, and shouting ' After me, Hereward's men ! 
 A Wake ! A Wake ! ' swung Letts and Finns right and left like 
 cornsheaves, and stood face to face with Herluin. 
 
 An angry savage smote him on the hind head full with a stone 
 axe. He staggered, and then looked round and laughed. 
 
 ' Fool ! hast thou not heard that Hereward's armour was 
 forged by dwarfs in the mountain-bowels ? Off', and hunt for 
 gold, or it will be all gone.' 
 
 The Finn, who was astonished at getting no more from his 
 l)low than a few sparks, and expected instant death in return, 
 took the hint and vanished jabbering, as did his fellows. 
 
 ' Now, Herluin the Frenchman ! ' said Hereward. 
 
 ' Now, Hereward the robber of saints ! ' said Herluin. 
 
 It was a fine sight. The soldier and the churchman, the 
 Englishman and the Frenchman, the man of the then world, 
 and the man of the then Church, joitted fairly, face to face. 
 
 Hereward tried for one moment to stare down Herluin. But 
 those terrible eye-glances, before which Vikings had quailed, 
 turned oft* harmless from the more terrible glance of the man 
 who believed himself backed by the Maker of the universe, and 
 all the hierarchy of heaven. 
 
 A sharp, unlovely face it was ; though, like many a great 
 churchman's face of those days, it was neither thin nor haggard : 
 but rather round, sleek, of a pufty and unwholesome paleness. 
 But there was a thin lip above a broad square jaw, which 
 showed that Herluin was neitlier fool nor coward. 
 
 'A robber and a child of Belial thou hast been from thy 
 cradle ; and a robber and a cliild of Belial tliou art now. Dare 
 thy last iniquity. Slay the servants of St. Peter on St. Peter's 
 altar, with thy worthy comrades, the heathen Saracens,^ and 
 set up Mahound with them in tlie holy place.' 
 
 Hereward laughed so jolly a laugh, that the prior was taken 
 aback. 
 
 ' Slay St. Peter's monks 1 Not even his rats ! I am a monk's, 
 knight, as my knot testifies. There shall not a hair of your 
 head be touched. Only, I must clear out all Frenchmen hence ; 
 and all Englishmen likewise, as storks have chosen to pack with 
 the cranes. Here, Hereward's men ! march these traitors and 
 
 '' The Danes were continually mistaken by medifeval cliurclimen for 
 Saracens, and the Saracens considered to be idolaters. A maumee, or idol, 
 means a Mahomet.
 
 XXVI HOW HEREWARD FULFILLED HIS WORDS 235 
 
 their French prior safe out of the walls, and into Milton woods, 
 to look after tlieir poor corrodiers.' 
 
 ' Out of this place I stir not. Here I am ; and here I will live 
 or die, as St. Peter shall send aid.' 
 
 But as he spoke he was i^recipitated rudely forward, and 
 liurried almost into Hereward's arms. The whole body of 
 monks, when they heard Hereward's words, cared to hear no 
 more : but, desperate between fear and joy, rushed forward, 
 bearing away their prior in the midst. 
 
 ' So go the rats out of Peterborough, and so is my dream ful- 
 filled. Now for the treasure, and then to Ely.' 
 
 But Herluin burst himself clear of the frantic mob of monks, 
 and turned back on Hereward. 
 
 ' Thou wast dubbed knight in that clmrch ! ' 
 
 ' I know it, man, and that chui'ch and the relics of the saints 
 in it are safe therefore. Hereward gives his word.' 
 
 ' That — but not that only, if thou art a true knight, as thou 
 holdest. Englishman.' 
 
 Hereward growled savagely, and made an ugly step toward 
 Herluin. That was a point which he would not have questioned. 
 
 'Then behave as a knight, and save, save' — as the monks 
 dragged him away — 'save the hospice! There are women — 
 ladies there ! ' shouted he, as he was borne oft'. 
 
 They never met again on earth : but both comforted them- 
 selves in after years, that two old enemies' last deed in com- 
 mon had been one of mercy. 
 
 Hereward uttered a cry of horror. If the wild Letts, even 
 tlie Jomsburgers, had got in, all was lost. He rushed to the 
 door. It was not yet burst : but a bench, swung by strong arms, 
 was battering it in fast. 
 
 ' Winter ! Gery ! Siwards ! To me, Hereward's men ! Stand 
 back, fellows. Here are friends here inside. If you do not, I'll 
 cut you down.' 
 
 But in vain. The door was burst, and in poured the savage 
 mob. Hereward, unable to stop them, headed them, or pre- 
 tended to do so, with five or six of his own men round him, and 
 went into the liall. 
 
 On the rushes lay some half-dozen grooms. They were 
 butchered instantly, simply because they were there. Hereward 
 saw : but could not prevent. He ran as hard as he could to the 
 foot of the wooden stair wliicli led to the upper floor. 
 
 ' Guard the stair-foot. Winter ! ' and he ran up. 
 
 Two women cowered upon the floor, shrieking and praying 
 with hands clasped over tlieir heads. He .saw that the arms of 
 one of them were of tlie most delicate whiteness, and judging 
 lier to be the lady, bent over her. 'Lady ! you are safe. I will 
 l)rotect you. I am Hereward.' 
 
 She sprang up, and tlirew herself with a scream into his 
 arms.
 
 236 HEREAYARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' Hereward ! Hereward ! Save me. I am ' 
 
 ' Alftruda ! ' said Hereward. 
 
 It was Alftruda ; if possible more beautiful than ever. 
 
 ' I have got you ! ' she cried. ' I am safe now. Take me away 
 — Out of this liorrible place — Take me into the woods — Any- 
 where — Only do not let me be burnt here — stifled like a i-at. 
 Give me air ! Give me water ! ' and she clung to him so madly 
 that Hereward, as he held her in his arms, and gazed on her 
 extraordinary beauty, forgot Torfrida for the second time. 
 
 But there was no time to indulge in evil thoughts, even had 
 any crossed his mind. He caught her in his arms, and com- 
 manding the maid to follow, hurried down the stair. 
 
 Winter and the Siwards were defending the foot with swing- 
 ing blades. The savages were howling round like curs about a 
 bull ; and when Hereward appeared above with the women, 
 thei^e was a loud yell of rage and envy. 
 
 He should not have the women to himself — They would share 
 the i^lunder equally — was sliouted in half a dozen barbarous 
 dialects. 
 
 ' Have you left any valuables in the chamber 1 ' whispered he 
 to Alftruda. 
 
 ' Yes, jewels — robes — Let tliem have all, only save me ! ' 
 
 ' Let me pass ! ' roared Hereward. ' There is rich booty in the 
 room above, and you may have it as these ladies' ransom. 
 Them you do not touch. Back, I say, let me pass ! ' 
 
 And he rushed forward. Winter and the housecarles formed 
 round him and the women, and hurried down the hall ; while 
 the savages hurried up the ladder, to quarrel over their spoil. 
 
 They were out in the courtyard, and safe for the moment. 
 But whither sliould he take her 1 
 
 ' To Earl Asbioi-n,' said one of the Siwards. But how to find 
 him? 
 
 ' There is Bishop Christiern ! ' And the bishop was caught 
 and stopped. 
 
 'This is an evil day's work, Sir Hereward.' 
 
 ' Then help to mend it by taking care of these ladies, like a 
 man of God.' And he explained the case. 
 
 'You may come safely with me, my poor lambs,' said the 
 bishop. ' I am glad to find something to do fit for a churchman. 
 To me, my housecarles.' '^ 
 
 But they were all off plundering. 
 
 'We will stand by you and the ladies, and see you safe down 
 to the ships,' said Winter, and so they went ort". 
 
 Hereward would gladly have gone with them, as Alftruda 
 piteously entreated him. But he heard his name called on every 
 side in angry tones. 
 
 ' Who wants Hereward 1 ' 
 
 ' Earl Asbiorn — Here he is.' 
 
 'Those scoundrel monks have hidden all the rtltar furniture.
 
 XXVI now HEREWARD FULFILLED HLS WORDS 237 
 
 If you wish to save them from being tortured to death, you had 
 best tiiid it.' 
 
 Hereward ran with liim into the cathedral. It was a hideous 
 sight; torn books and vestments; broken tabernacle - work ; 
 foul savages swarming in and out of every dark aisle and 
 cloister, like wolves in search of prey ; five or six ruffians aloft 
 upon the rood-screen ; one tearing the golden crown from the 
 head of the crucifix, another the golden footstool from its feet.^ 
 
 As Hereward came up, crucifix and man fell together, crash- 
 ing upon the pavement, amid shouts of brutal laughter. 
 
 He hurried past them, shuddering, into the choir. The altar 
 was bare ; the golden pallium which covered it, gone. 
 
 ' It may be in the crypt below. I suppose the monks keep 
 their relics there,' said Asbiorn. 
 
 ' No ! Not there. Do not touch tlie relics ! Would you have 
 the curse of all the saints 1 Stay ! I know an old hiding-place. 
 It may be there. Up into the steejile with me.' 
 
 And in a chamber in the steejile they found the golden pall, 
 and treasures countless and wonderful. 
 
 'We liad better keep the knowledge of this to ourselves 
 awhile,' said Earl Asbiorn, looking with greedy eyes on a heap 
 of wealth such as he had never beheld before. 
 
 ' Not we ! Hereward is a man of his Avord, and we will share 
 and share alike.' 
 
 'What will you?' And Asbiorn caught liim by the arm. 
 'This treasure belongs of riglit to Sweyn the king.' 
 
 'It belongs to St. Peter, who must lend it to-day to save the 
 l^oor fen-men from robbers and ravishers ; and not to any king 
 on earth. Take off thine hand, jarl, if thou Avouldst keep it safe 
 on thy body.' 
 
 Asbiorn drew back, gnashing his teetli with rage. To strike 
 Hereward was more than he, or any Berserker in his host, dared 
 to do : and besides, he felt that Hereward 's words were just. 
 
 ' Hither ! ' shouted Hereward down the stair. ' Up liither, 
 Vikings, Berserkers, and sea-cocks all ! Here, Jutlanders, Joms- 
 burgers, Letts, Finns, witclies' sons and devils' sons all ! Here 
 is gold, here is the dwarf's work, here is the dragon's hoard ! 
 Come up and take your Polotaswarf ! You would not get a 
 richer out of the kaiser's treasury. Here, wolves and ravens, 
 eat gold, drink gold, roll in gold, and know that Herewax'd is a 
 man of liis word, and pays his soldiers' wages royally.' 
 
 They rushed up tlie narrow staii', trampling each other to 
 death, and thrust Hereward and the earl, choking, into a 
 corner. The room was so full for a few moments that some 
 died in it. Hereward and Asbiorn, protected by their strong 
 armour, forced their way to the narrow window, and breathed 
 througli it, looking out upon the sea of flame below. 
 
 ^ The crucifix was j^robably of the Greek pattern, in which the figure 
 stood upon a fiat slab, projecting from tlic cross.
 
 238 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 'I am sorry for you, jarl,' said Hereward. 'But for tlie poor 
 Englishmen's sake, so it must be.' 
 
 'King Sweyn shall judge of that. Why dost hold my wrist, 
 man ? ' 
 
 ' Daggers are apt to get loose in such a press as this.' 
 
 'Always The Wake,' said Asbiorn, with a forced laugh. 
 
 'Always The Wake. And as thou saidst, King Sweyn the 
 just shall judge between us.' 
 
 Jarl Asbiorn swung from him, and into the now thinning 
 press. Soon only a few remained, to search, by the glare of the 
 flames, for what their fellows might have overlooked. 
 
 ' Now the play is played out,' said Hereward, 'we may as well 
 go down and to our ships.' 
 
 Some drunken ruffians would have burnt the church for mere 
 mischief. But Asbiorn, as well as Hereward, stopped that. And 
 gradually they got the men down to the ships ; some drunk, 
 some struggling under plunder ; some cursing and quarrelling 
 because nothing had fallen to their lot. It was a hideous scene : 
 but one to which Hereward, as well as Asbiorn, was too well 
 accustomed to see aught in it save an hour's inevitable trouble 
 in getting the men on board. 
 
 Tlie monks had all fled. Only Leofwin the Long was left, 
 and he lay sick in the inflrmary. Whether he was burnt there- 
 in, or saved by Hereward's men, is not told. 
 
 And so was the Golden Borough sacked and burnt. Now 
 then, wliither ? ' 
 
 The Danes were to go to Ely and join the army there. 
 Hereward would march on to Stamford ; secure the town if he 
 could ; then to Huntingdon, to secure it likewise ; and on to 
 Ely afterwards. 
 
 'You will not leave me among these savages V said Alftruda. 
 
 ' Heaven forbid ! You shall come with me as far as Stamford, 
 and then I will set you on your way.' 
 
 ' My way 1 ' said Alftruda, in a bitter and hopeless tone. 
 
 Hereward mounted her on a good horse, and rode beside her, 
 looking — and he well knew it — a very perfect knight. Soon they 
 began to talk. What had brought Alftruda to Peterborough, of 
 all places on earth ? 
 
 ' A woman's fortune. Because I am rich — and some say fair 
 — I am a puppet, a slave, a prey. I was going back to my — to 
 Dolfln.' 
 
 ' Have you been away from him, then ? ' 
 
 ' What 1 Do you not know ? ' 
 
 'How should I know, lady?' 
 
 'Yes, most true. How shoulcl Hereward know anything 
 about Alftruda ? But I will tell you. Maybe you may not care 
 to hear ? ' 
 
 ' About you 1 Anything. I have often longed to know how 
 — what you were doing.'
 
 XXVI HOAV HEREWARD FULFILLED HIS WORDS 239 
 
 ' Is it possible 1 Is there one human being left on earth 
 who cares to hear about Alf truda ? Then listen. You know that 
 when Gospatric fled to Scotland his sons went with him — young 
 Gospatric, Waltheof,i and lie — Doliin. Ethelreda, his girl, went 
 too — and she is to marry, they say, Duncan, ^Malcolm's eldest 
 son by Ingebiorg. So Gospatric will find himself, some day, 
 father-in-law of the King of Scots.' 
 
 ' I will warrant him to find his nest well lined, wherever he 
 be. But of yourself ? ' 
 
 'I refused to go. I could not face again that bleak black 
 North. Besides — but that is no concern of Hereward's ' 
 
 Hei'eward was on the point of saying, ' Can anything concern 
 you, and not be interesting to me ? ' 
 
 But she went on : 
 
 ' I refused, and ' 
 
 ' And he misused you 1 ' asked he fiercely. 
 
 'Better if he had. Better if he had tied me to his stirrup, 
 and scourged me along into Scotland, than have left me to new 
 dangers, and to old temptations.' 
 
 'What temptations V 
 
 Alftruda did not answer : but went on — 
 
 ' He told me in his lofty Scots' fashion, that I was free to do 
 what I list. That he liad long since seen that I cared not for 
 liim ; and that lie would find many a fairer lady in liis own land.' 
 
 ' Tliere he lied. So you did not care for him ? He is a noble 
 knight.' 
 
 ' What is that to me 1 Women's hearts are not to be bought 
 and sold with tlieir bodies, as I was sold. Care for him ? I 
 care for no creature upon earth. Once I cared for Hereward, 
 like a silly child. Now I care not even for him.' 
 
 Herewai'd was sorry to hear that. Men are vainer than 
 women ; just as peacocks are vainer than peahens ; and Here- 
 ward was — alas far him ! — a specially vain man. Of course, for 
 him to fall in love with Alftruda would have been a shameful 
 sin ; he would not have committed it for all the treasures of 
 Constantinople : but it was a not unpleasant thought that Alf- 
 truda sliould fall in love with him. But he only said, tenderly 
 and courteously — 
 
 ' Alas ! poor lady ! ' 
 
 'Poor lady. Too true, that last. For whither am I going 
 now 1 Back to that man once more.' 
 
 'ToDolfinr 
 
 'To my master, like a runaway slave. I went down south to 
 Queen Matilda. I knew her well, and she was kind to me, as 
 
 ' This Waltheof Gospatricssou must not be confounded with Waltheof 
 Siwardsson, the young earl. He became a wild border chieftain, then 
 Baron of Atterdale, and then gave Atterdale to liis sister, Queen Ethelreda, 
 and turned monk, and at last abbot, of Crowland ; crawling home, poor 
 fellow, like many another, to elie in peace in the sanctuary of the Danes.
 
 240 HEREWARD THE WAKE chai-. 
 
 she is to all things tli.at breathe. But now that Gospatric is 
 come into the king's grace again, and has bought the earldom of 
 
 Northumbria, from Tees to Tyne ' 
 
 ' Bought the earldom 1 ' 
 
 
 ' That has he ; and paid for it right heavily.' 
 
 'Traitor and fool! He will not keep it seven years. The 
 Frenchman will pick a quarrel with him, and cheat him out of 
 earldom and money too.' 
 
 The which William did, within three years. 
 
 ' May it be so ! But when he came into the king's grace, he 
 must needs demand me back in his son's name.' 
 
 'What does Doltin want with you?' 
 
 ' His father wants my money ; and stipulated for it with the 
 king. And besides, I suppose I am a pretty plaything enough 
 still.' 
 
 'You? You are divine, perfect. Dolfin is right. How could 
 a man who had once enjoyed you, live without you?' 
 
 Alftruda laughed, a laugh full of meaning : but what that 
 meaning was Hereward could not divine. 
 
 ' So now,' she said, ' what Hereward has to do, as a true and 
 courteous knight, is to give Alftruda safe conduct, and, if he can, 
 a guard ; and to deliver her up loyally and knightly to his old 
 friend and fellow-warrior, Doltin Gospatricsson, earl of whatever 
 he can lay hold of for the current month.' 
 
 ' Are you in earnest V 
 
 Alftruda laughed one of her strange laughs, looking straight 
 before her. Indeed she had never looked Hereward in the face 
 doring the whole ride. 
 
 ' What are those open holes ? Graves ? ' 
 
 ' They are Barnack stone quarries, which Waltheof the Wittol 
 has just given away to Crowland. Better^ that, though, than 
 keep them for his new French cousins to build castles withal' 
 
 ' So ? Tliat is a pity. I thought they had been graves ; and 
 then you might have covered me up in one of them, and left me 
 
 to sleep in peace.' -, ^ ,, *,;. ■, 
 
 ' Wiiat can I do for you, Alftruda, my old playfellow, Alftruda, 
 whom I saved from the bear ? ' 
 
 'If Alftruda had foreseen the second monster into whose jaws 
 she was to fall, she would have prayed you to hold that terrible 
 hand of yours, which never since, men say, has struck without 
 victory and renown. You won your first honour for my sake. 
 But who am I now, that you should turn out of your glorious 
 
 path for me ?' ■ i, , • i i 
 
 ' I will do anything— anything. But why miscall this noble 
 
 prince a monster ? ' 
 
 ' If he were fairer than St. John, more wise than Solomon, 
 and more valiant than King William, he is to me a monster ; 
 for I loathe him, and I know not why. But do your duty as a 
 knight, sir. Convey the lawful wife to her lawful spouse.'
 
 XXVI HOW HEREWARD FULFILLED HIS WORDS 241 
 
 'What cares an outlaw for law, in a land where law is dead 
 and gone ? I will do what I — what you like. Come with me to 
 Torfrida at Bourne ; and let me see the man who dares try to 
 take you out of my hand.' 
 
 Alftruda laughed again. 
 
 ' Xo, no. I should interrupt the doves in their nest. Besides, 
 tlie billing and cooing might make me envious. And I, alas ! 
 who carry misery with me round the land, might make your 
 Torfrida jealous.' 
 
 Hereward was of the same opinion, and rode silent and 
 thoughtful through the great Avoods which are now the noble 
 piiik of Burghley. 
 
 ' I have found it ! ' said he at last. ' Why not go to Gilbert of 
 Ghent, at Lincoln ? ' 
 
 ' Gilbert 1 Why should he befriend me ? ' 
 
 'He will do that, or anything else, which is for his own 
 profit.' 
 
 ' Profit 1 All the world seems determined to make profit out 
 of me. I presume you would, if I had come with you to 
 Bourne.' 
 
 ' I do not doubt it. This is a very wild sea to swim in ; and 
 a man must be forgiven if he catches at every bit of drift 
 timber.' 
 
 'Selfishness, selfishness every whei'e; — and I suppose you 
 expect to gain by sending me to Gillsert of Ghent?' 
 
 'I shall gain nothing, Alftruda, save the thought that you 
 are not so far from me — from us — but that we can hear of you 
 — send succour to you if you need.' 
 
 Alftruda was silent. At last — 
 
 ' And you think that Gilbert would not be afraid of angering 
 the king?' 
 
 'He would not anger the king. Gilbert's friendship is more 
 important to William, at this moment, than that of a dozen 
 Gospatrics. He holds Lincoln town, and with it the key of 
 Waltheof's earldom : and things may happen, Alftruda — I tell 
 you : but if you tell Gilbert, may Hereward's curse be on you ! ' 
 
 ' Not that ! Any man's curse save yours ! ' said she in so 
 passionate a voice that a thrill of fire ran through Hereward. 
 And he recollected her scoff at Bruges — ' So he could not wait 
 for me?' And a storm of evil thoughts swept through him. 
 ' Would to heaven ! ' said he to himself, crushing them gallantly 
 down, 'I had never thought of Lincoln. But there is no other 
 plan.' 
 
 But he did not tell Alftruda, as he had meant to do, that she 
 might see him soon in Lincoln castle as its conqueror and lord. 
 He half hoped that when that day came, Alftruda might be 
 somewhere else. 
 
 'Gilbert can say,' he went on, steadying himself again, 'that 
 you feared to go north on account of the disturbed state of the 
 
 R II. T. w.
 
 242 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 country ; and that, as you had given yourself up to him of your 
 own accord, he thought it wisest to detain you, as a hostage for 
 Dolfin's allegiance.' 
 
 ' He shall say so. I will make him say so.' 
 ' So be it. Now, here we are at Stamford town ; and I must 
 to my trade. Do you like to see fighting, Alftruda — the man's 
 game, the royal game, the only game worth a thought on earth 1 
 For you are like to see a little in the next ten minutes.' 
 
 ' I should like to see you fight. They tell me none is so swift 
 and terrible in the battle as Hereward. How can you be other- 
 wise, who slew the bear — when we were two happy children to- 
 gether ? But shall I be safe ? ' 
 
 ' Safe 1 of course,' said Hereward, who longed, peacock -like, 
 to show ofi" his prowess before a lady who was — there was no 
 denying it — far more beautiful than even Torfrida. 
 
 But he had no opportunity to show off that prowess. For, as 
 he galloped in over Stamford Bridge, Abbot Thorold galloped 
 out at the opposite end of the town through Casterton, and up 
 the Roman road to Grantham. 
 
 After whom Hereward sent Alftruda (for he heard that 
 Thorold was going to Gilbert at Lincoln) with a guard of 
 knights ; bidding them do him no harm, but saying that Here- 
 ward knew him to be a preux chevalier and lover of fair ladies ; 
 that he had sent him a right fair one to bear him company to 
 Lincoln ; and hoped that he would sing to her on the way the 
 song of Roland. 
 
 And Alftruda, who knew Thorold, went willingly, since it 
 could no better be. 
 
 After which, according to Gaimar, Hereward tarried three 
 days at Stamford, laying a heavy tribute on the burgesses for 
 harbouring Thorold and his Normans ; and also surprised at a 
 drinking bout a certain special enemy of his, and chased him 
 from room to room sword in hand, till he took refuge shamefully 
 in an outhouse, and begged his life. And when his knights came 
 back from Grantham, he marched to Bourne. 
 
 ' The next night,' says Richard of Ely, or it may be -Leofric 
 himself, ' Hereward saw in his dreams a man standing by him 
 of inestimable beauty, old of years, terrible of countenance, in 
 all the raiment of his ho(\y more splendid than all things which 
 he had ever seen, or conceived in his mind ; who threatened him 
 with a great club which he carried in his hand, and with a 
 fearful doom, that he should take back to his church all that 
 had been carried off the night before, and have them restored 
 utterly, each in its place, if he wished to provide for the salva- 
 tion of his soul, and escape on the spot a pitiable death. But 
 when awakened, he was seized with a divine terror, and restored 
 in the same hour all that he took away, and so departed, going- 
 onward with all liis men.' 
 
 So says the chronicler, wishing, as may be well believed, to
 
 XXVI HOW HEREWARD FULFILLED HLS WORDS 243 
 
 advance the glory of St. Peter, and to purge his hero's name 
 from the stain of sacrilege. Besides, the monks of Peter borougli, 
 no doubt, had no wish that the world should spy out their 
 nakedness, and become aware that the Golden Borough was 
 stripped of all its gold. 
 
 Nevertheless, truth will out. Golden Borough was Golden 
 Borough no more. The treasures were never restored ; they 
 went to sea with the Danes, and were scattered far and wide — 
 to Norway, to Ireland, to Denmark ; ' all the spoils,' says tlie 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ' which reached the latter country, being 
 the pallium and some of the slirines and crosses ; and many of 
 tlie other treasures they brought to one of the king's towns, and 
 laid thera up in the church. But one night, through their care- 
 lessness and drunkenness, the church was burned, with all that 
 was therein. Thus was the minster of Peterborough burned 
 and pillaged. ]\ray Almighty God have pity on it in His great 
 mercy. And thus Abbot Turold came to Peterborough. . . . 
 When Bishop Egelric heard this, he excommunicated the men 
 who had done this evil. There was a great famine this year.' 
 
 Hereward, when blamed for the deed, said always that he did 
 it ' because of his allegiance to the monastery.' 
 
 And some of the treasure, at least, he must have surely given 
 back, he so appeased the angry shade of St. Peter. For on that 
 night, when marching past Stamford, he and his lost their way. 
 ' To whom a certain wonder happened, and a miracle, if it can 
 be said that such would be worked in favour of men of blood. 
 For while in the wild night and dark they wandered in the wood, 
 a huge wolf met them, wagging his tail like a tame dog, and 
 went before them on a path. And they, taking the gray beast 
 in the darkness for a wliite dog, cheered on each other to follow 
 him to his farm, which ought to be hard by. And in the silence 
 of the midnight, that they miglit see their way, suddenly candles 
 appeared, burning and clinging to tlie lances of all tlie knights 
 — not very bright, however : but like those wliicli the folk called 
 candelfe nympharum — wills of the wisp. But none could pull 
 them off, or altogether extinguish them, or throw them from 
 their hands. And thus they saw their way, and went on, although 
 astonished out of mind, with the wolf leading them until day 
 dawned, and they saw, to their great astonishment, tliat he was 
 a wolf. And as they questioned among themselves about what 
 liad befallen, the wolf and the candles disappeared, and they 
 came whither they had been minded, beyond Stamford town, 
 thanking (iod, and wondering at what liad happened.' 
 
 After which Hereward took Torfrida, and liis cliild, and all 
 he had, and took ship at Bardeney, and went for Ely. Which 
 when Earl Warrenne heard, he laid wait for him, seemingly 
 near Littleport : but got notliing thei-eby, according to Richard 
 of Ely, but the pleasure of giving and taking a great deal of bad 
 language ; and (after his men had refused, reasonably enough.
 
 244 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 to swim the O use and attack Hereward) an arrow, which Here- 
 ward, niodicum se inc/uians, stoojiing forward, says the chronicler 
 —who probably saw the deed— shot at him across the Ouse, as 
 the earl stood cursing on the top of the dyke. Which arrow flew 
 so stout and strong, that tiiough it sprang back from Earl 
 Warrenne's hauberk, it knocked him almost senseless off" his 
 horse, and forced him to defer his purpose of avenging Sir 
 Frederic his brother. 
 
 After wliich Hereward threw liimself into Ely, and assumed, 
 by consent of all, the command of the English who were therein. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 HOW THEY HELB A GREAT MEETING IN THE HALL OF ELY 
 
 There sat round the hall of Ely all the magnates of the east 
 land and east sea. The abbot was on his high seat ; and on a 
 seat higher than his, prepared specially, Sweyn Ulfsson, King 
 of Denmark and England. By them sat the bishops, Egelwin 
 the Englishman and Christiern tlie Dane ; Asbiorn ; tlie young 
 Earls Edwin and Morcar, and Sweyn's two sons ; and, it may 
 be, the sons of Tosti Godwinsson, and Arkill the great thane, 
 and Siward Barn, and Hereward himself. Below them were 
 knights. Vikings, captains, great liolders from Denmark, and 
 the prior and inferior officers of Ely minster. And at the 
 bottom of the misty hall, on the other side of the column of 
 blue vapour which went trembling up from the great heap of 
 burning turf amidst, were housecarles, monks, wild men from 
 the Baltic shores, crowded together to hear what was done in 
 that parliament of their betters. 
 
 Tliey spoke like free Danes ; the betters from the upper end 
 of the hall, but every man as he chose. They were in full 
 Thing ; in parliament, as their forefathers had been wont to be 
 for countless ages. Their House of Lords and their House of 
 Commons were not yet deffned from each other : but they knew 
 the rules of the house, the courtesies of debate ; and, by jDractice 
 of free speech, had educated themselves to bear and forbear, 
 like gentlemen. 
 
 But the speaking was loud and earnest, often angry that 
 day. 'What was to be done?' was the question before the 
 liouse. 
 
 'That depended,' said Sweyn, the wise and prudent king, 'on 
 what could be done by the English to co-operate with them.' 
 And what that was has been already told. 
 
 'When Tosti Godwinsson, ye bishops, jarls, kniglits, and 
 holders, came to me ffve years ago, and bade me take my rights 
 in this land of England, I answered him that I had not wit 
 enough to do the deeds which Canute my uncle did ; and so sat
 
 XXVII 
 
 HOW THEY^ELD A GREAT MEETING 245 
 
 still in peace. I little thought that I should have lost in five 
 years so much of those small wits to which I confessed, that I 
 should come after all to take my rightful kingdom of England, 
 and find two kings in it already, both moi'e to the English mind 
 than I am. While William the Frenchman is king by the sword, 
 and Edgar the Englishman king by i^roclamation of earls and 
 thanes, there seems no room here for Sweyn, nephew of Canute, 
 king of kings.' 
 
 ' We will make room for you ! We will make a rid road from 
 here to W^inchester ! ' sliouted the meeting, with one voice. 
 
 ' It is too late. What say you, Hereward Leofricsson, who go 
 for a wise man among men ? ' 
 
 Hereward rose, and spoke gracefully, earnestly, eloquently : 
 but he could not deny Sweyn's jolain words. 
 
 ' The Wake beats about the bush,' said Jarl Asbiorn, rising 
 when Hereward sat down. ' None knows better than he that 
 all is over. Earl Edwin and Earl j\Iorcar, who should have 
 helped us along Watling Street, are here fugitives. Earl Gos- 
 patric and Earl Waltheof are William's men now, soon to raise 
 the landsfolk against us. We had better go home before we 
 have eaten up the monks of Ely.' 
 
 Then Hereward rose again, and without an openly insvdting 
 word poured forth his scorn and rage upon Asbiorn. Why had 
 he not kept to the agreement which he and Countess Gyda had 
 made with him through Tosti's sons ? Why had he wasted time 
 and men from Dover to Norwich, instead of coming straight 
 into the fens, and marching inland to succour Morcar and 
 Edwin ? Asbiorn had ruined the plan, and he only, if it was 
 ruined. 
 
 'And who was I, to obey The Wake?' asked Asbiorn fiercely. 
 
 'And who wert thou, to disobey me?' asked Sweyn in a 
 tei'rible voice. ' Hereward is riglit. We shall see what thou 
 sayest to all this, in full Thing at home in Denmark.' ^ 
 
 Then Edwin rose, entreating peace. 'They were beaten. 
 The hand of God was against them. Why should they struggle 
 any more ? Or, if they struggled on, why should they involve 
 the Danes in their own ruin 1 ' 
 
 Then man after man rose, and spoke rough Danish common 
 sense. They had come hither to win England. They had found 
 it won already. Let tliem take what they had got from Peter- 
 borougli, and go. 
 
 Then Winter sprang up. ' Take tlio pay, and sail off with it, 
 without liaving done the Avork ? That would be a noble tale to 
 carry home to your fair wives in Jutland. I shall not call you 
 niddering, being a man of peace, as all know.' Whereat all 
 laughed ; for the douglity little man had not a hand's breadth 
 on head or arm without its scai'. ' But if your ladies call you 
 
 ^ Asbiorn is said to have been outlawed on his return home.
 
 'M6 HEREAVARD THE %AKE 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 SO, you must lla^'e a shrewd answer to give, beside knocking 
 them down.' 
 
 Sweyn spoke without rising—' The good kniglit forgets that 
 this expedition has cost Denmark already nigh as much as 
 Harold Hardraade's cost Norway. It is hard upon the Danes, 
 if they are to go away empty-handed as well as disappointed.' 
 
 ' Tlie king has right ! ' cried Hereward. ' Let them take the 
 plunder of Peterborough as pay for what they have done, and 
 what besides they would liave done if Asbiorn the jarl— nay, 
 men of England, let us be just !— what Asbiorn himself would 
 liave done if there had been heart and wit, one mind and one 
 purpose, in England. The Danes have done their best. They 
 have shown themselves what they are, our blood and kin. I 
 know that some talk of treason, of bribes. Let us have no more 
 such vain and foul suspicions. They came as our friends ; and 
 as our friends let them go, and leave us to fight out our own 
 quarrel to the last drop of blood.' 
 
 ' Would God ! ' said Sweyn, ' thou wouldest go too, thou good 
 knight. Here, earls and gentlemen of England ! Sweyn Ulfs- 
 son offers to every one of you, who will come to Denmark with 
 him, shelter and hospitality till better times shall come.' 
 
 Then arose a mixed cry. Some would go, some would not. 
 So_me_ of the Danes took the proposal cordially ; some feared 
 bringing among themselves men wJio would needs want land, of 
 which there was none to give. If the English came, they must 
 go up the Baltic, and conquer fresh lands for themselves from 
 heathen Letts and Finns. 
 
 Then Hereward rose again, and spoke so nobly and so well 
 that all ears were charmed. 
 
 They were Englishmen ; and they would rather die in their 
 own merry England than win new kingdoms in the cold north- 
 east. Tliey were sworn, the leaders of them, to die or conquer, 
 lighting the accursed Frenclmian. They were bound to St. 
 Peter, and to St. Guthlac, and to St. Felix of Eamsey, and St. 
 Etheldreda the holy virgin beneath whose roof they stood, to 
 defend against Frenchmen the saints of England whom they 
 despised and blasphemed, whose servants tliey cast' out, thrust 
 into prison, and murdered, that they might bring in Frenchmen 
 from Normandy, Italians from the Pope of Eome. Sweyn 
 Ulfsson spoke as became him, as a prudent and a generous 
 prince ; the man Avho alone of all kings defied and fought the 
 great Hardraade till neither could fight more ; the true nephew 
 of Canute the king of kings : and they thanked him : but tliey 
 would live and die Englishmen. 
 
 And every Englishman shouted, 'Hereward is right! We 
 wdll live and die fighting the French.' 
 
 And Sweyn Ulfsson rose again, and said with a great oath, 
 ' That if there had been three such men as Hereward in England, 
 all would have gone well.'
 
 XXVII HOW THEY HELD A GREAT MEETING 247 
 
 Hereward laughed. ' Thou art wrong for once, wise king. 
 We have failed, just because there were a dozen men in England 
 as good as I, every man wanting his own way ; and too many 
 cooks have sj^oiled the broth. Wliat we wanted is not a dozen 
 men like me, but one like thee, to take us all by the back of the 
 neck and shake us soundly, and say, " Do that, or die ! " ' 
 
 And so, after much talk, the meeting broke up. And when 
 it broke up, there came to Hereward in the hall a noble-looking 
 man of his own age, and put his hand within his, and said — 
 
 ' Do you not know me, Hereward Leofricsson V 
 
 'I know thee not, good knight, more pity ; but by thy dress 
 and carriage, thou shouldest be a true Vikingsson.' 
 
 ' I am Sigtryg Eanaldsson, now King of Waterford. And my 
 wife said to me, " If there be treachery or faint-heartedness, 
 remember this — that Hereward Leofricsson slew the ogre, and 
 Hannibal of Marazion likewise, and brought me safe to thee. 
 And, therefore, if thou provest false to him, niddering thou art ; 
 and no niddering is sjwuse of mine."' 
 
 ' Thou art Sigtryg Ranaldsson ? ' cried Hereward, clasping 
 him in his arms, as the scenes of his wild youth rushed across his 
 mind. ' Better is old wine than new, and old friends likewise.' 
 
 ' And I, and my five ships, are thine to death. Let who will 
 go back.' 
 
 ' They must go,' said Hereward, half -peevishly. ' Sweyn has 
 right, and Asbiorn too. The game is played out. Sweep the 
 cliessmen off' the board, as Earl Ulf did by Canute the king.' 
 
 'And lost his life thereby. I shall stand by, and see thee 
 play the last pawn.' 
 
 ' And lose thy life in likewise.' 
 
 ' What matter 1 I lieard thee sing — 
 
 ' " A bed-death, a priest death, 
 A straw death, a cow death, 
 Such death Ukes not me." 
 
 Nor likes it me either, Hereward Leofricsson.' 
 
 So the Danes sailed away : but Sigtryg Ixanaldsson and his 
 live ships remained. 
 
 Hereward went up to the minster tower • and watched the 
 Ouse flashing with countless oars northward toward Southrey 
 Fen. And when they were all out of sight, he went back, and 
 lay down on his bed, and wept — once and for all. Then he 
 arose, and went down into the hall to abbots and monks, and 
 earls and knights, and was the boldest, cheeriest, wittiest of 
 them all. 
 
 'They say,' quoth he to Torfrida that night, 'that some men 
 have gray heads on green shoulders. I have a gray heart in a 
 green body.' 
 
 ' And my heart is growing very gray too,' said Torfrida.
 
 248 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' Certainly not thy head.' And he played with her raven locks. 
 ' That may come, too ; and too soon.' 
 For, indeed, they were in very evil case. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 HOW THEY FOUGHT AT ALDEETH 
 
 When William heard that the Danes were gone, he marched on 
 Ely, as on an easy prey. 
 
 Ivo Taillebois came with him, hungry after those Spalding 
 lands, the rents whereof Hereward had been taking for his men 
 for now twelve months. William de Warrenne was there, 
 vowed to revenge the death of Sir Frederic, his brother. 
 Ralph Guader was there, flushed with his success at Norwich. 
 And with them were all the Frenchmen of the east, who had 
 been either expelled from their lands, or were in fear of 
 expulsion. 
 
 With them, too, was a great army of mercenaries, ruffians 
 from all France and Flanders, hired to fight for a certain term, on 
 the chance of plunder or of fiefs in land. Their brains were 
 all aflame with the tales of inestimable riches hidden in Ely. 
 There were there the jewels of all the monasteries round ; there 
 were the treasures of all the fugitive English nobles ; there were 
 there — what was there not ? And they grumbled when William 
 halted them and hutted them at Cambridge, and began to feel 
 cautiously the strength of the place — which must be strong, or 
 Hereward and the English would not have made it their camp 
 of refuge. 
 
 Perhaps he rode up to Madingley windmill ; and saw fifteen 
 miles away, clear against the sky, the long line of what 
 seemed nought but a low upland park, with the minster tower 
 among the trees ; and between him and them, a rich champaign 
 of grass, over wliich it was easy enough to march all the armies 
 of Eurojje ; and thought Ely an easy place to take. But men 
 told him that between him and those trees hxy a black abyss of 
 mud and jDeat and reeds, Haddenham fen and Smithy fen, with 
 tlie deep sullen West water or ' Ald-reche ' ^ of the Ouse winding 
 through them. Tlie old Roman road to Stretham was sunk and 
 gone long since under the bog, whether by English neglect, or 
 whether (as some think) by actual and bodily sinking of the 
 whole land. The narrowest space between dry land and dry 
 
 ^ I give the supposed etymologies of one of the various spellings of 
 'Alrehede,' now Aldreth. A better is Alre-hythe, the Aldershore ; a 
 better still, perhaps, St. Etheldreda, or Audrey, herself. St. Audrey's 
 Causeway leads to the spot ; St. Audrey's well is, or was, on the slope 
 above ; and the name of the place may be simply Audrey's Hythe.
 
 XXVIII HOW THEY FOUGHT AT ALDRETH 249 
 
 land was a full half-mile ; and how to cross that half-mile, no 
 man knew. 
 
 What were the ajiproaches on the west 1 There were none. 
 Beyond Earith, where now run the great washes of the Bedford 
 Level, was a howling wilderness of meres, eas, reed-ronds, and 
 floating alder-beds, tlirough which only the fen-men wandered, 
 with leaping-pole and log-canoe.^ 
 
 What in the east ? The dry land neared the island on that 
 side. And it may be that William rowed round by Burwell to 
 Fordham and Soham, and thought of attempting the island by 
 way of Barraway ; and saw beneath him a labyrinth of islands, 
 meres, fens, with the Cam, increased by the volume of the Ouse, 
 spreading far deeper and broader than now between Barraway 
 and Thetford-in-the-Isle ; and saw, too, that a disaster in that 
 labyrinth might be a destruction." 
 
 So he determined on the near and straight path, througli 
 Long Stanton and Willingham, down tlie old bridle-way from 
 Willingham ploughed field ; — every village there, and in the isle 
 likewise, had and has still its ' field,' or ancient clearing of 
 ploughed land — and then to try that terrible half-mile, with the 
 courage and wit of a general to whom human lives were as 
 those of the gnats under the hedge. 
 
 So all his host camped themselves in Willingham field, by the 
 old earthwork which men now call Belsar's Hills : and down 
 the bridle -way poured countless men, bearing timber and 
 faggots, cut from all the hills, that they might bridge the black 
 lialf-mile. 
 
 They made a narrow firm path through the reeds, and down 
 to the brink of the Ouse, if brink it could be called, where the 
 water, rising and falling a foot or two each tide, covered the 
 floating peat for many yards, before it sunk into a brown depth 
 of bottomless slime. They would make a bottom for themselves 
 l)y driving piles. 
 
 The piles would not hold ; and they began to make a floating 
 l)ridge with long beams, say the chroniclers, and blown-up 
 cattle-hides to float them. 
 
 Soon they made a floating-sow, and thrust it on before them 
 as they worked across the stream ; for they were getting under 
 shot from the island. 
 
 ^ The 'bridge two miles long,' which the Liber Eliensis says that 
 "William made to the west of the isle, is surely only a traditional exaggera- 
 tion of his repairs of Aldreth Causeway to the south-west. On the west, 
 the isle must have been utterly unapproachable. 
 
 - It may be well to explain to those who do not know the fens, that 
 the Ouse formerly parted at the isle of Ely, half its waters runniTig east- 
 ward by Aldreth into the Cam, half wandering northward to inundate 
 vast morasses to the west of the isle. Through those morasses (now fer- 
 tile helds), and above their level, the great works of the Bedford Level 
 now convey the Ouse straight to the tide at Denver sluice.
 
 250 HEREWARD THE AVAKE chap. 
 
 Meanwhile the besieged had not been idle. They had 
 thrown up a turf rampai-t on the island shore, and ' ante- 
 muralia et propugnacula ' — doubtless overhanging 'hoardings,' 
 or scaffolds, through the floor of which they could shower down 
 missiles.^ And so they awaited the attack, contenting them- 
 selves with gliding in and out of the reeds in their canoes, and 
 annoying the builders with arrows and cross-bow bolts. 
 
 At last the bridge was finished, and the sow safe across the 
 Westwater ; and thrust in, as far as it would float, among the 
 reeds on the high tide. They in the fort could touch it with a 
 pole. 
 
 The English would have destroyed it if they could. But The 
 Wake bade them leave it alone. He had watched all their 
 work, and made up his mind to the event. 
 
 ' The rats have set a trap for themselves,' he said to his men ; 
 'and we shall be fools to break it up till the I'ats are safe 
 inside.' 
 
 So there the huge sow lay, black and silent, showing nothing 
 to the enemy but a side of strong plank, covered with hide to 
 prevent its heing burned. It lay there for three hours, and The 
 Wake let it lie. 
 
 He had never been so cheerful, so confident. ' Play the man 
 this day, every one of you ; and ere nightfall you will have 
 taught the Frenchman once more the lesson of York. He seems 
 to have forgotten that. It is time to remind him of it.' 
 
 And he looked to his bow and to his arrows, and prepared to 
 play the man himself ; as was the fashion in those old days, 
 when a general proved his worth by hitting harder and more 
 surely than any of his men. 
 
 At last the army was in motion, and Willingham field oppo- 
 site was like a crawling ants' nest. Brigade after brigade 
 moved down to tlie reed beds, and the assault began. 
 
 And now advanced along the causeway, and along the 
 bridge, a dark column of men, surmounted by glittering steel ; 
 knights in complete mail ; footmen in leather coats and jerkins ; 
 at first ordei-ly enough, each under the banner of his lord : but 
 more and more mingled and crowded, as each hurried forward, 
 eager for his selfish share of the inestimable treasures of Ely. 
 They joushed along the bridge. The mass became more and 
 more crowded ; men stumbled over each other, and fell off" into 
 the mire and water, calling vainly for help : but their comrades 
 hurried on unheeding, in the mad thirst for spoil. 
 
 On they came in thousands ; and fresh thousands streamed 
 out of the fields, as if the whole army intended to pour itself 
 into the isle at once. 
 
 'They are numberless,' said Torfrida, in a serious and 
 astonished voice, as she stood by Hereward's side. 
 
 1 Was this 'Hereward's Fort,' which was still shown in the feus in 
 the days of Roger of AVendover ?
 
 XXVI I r now THEY FOUGHT AT ALDRETH 251 
 
 'Would they were!' said Hereward. 'Let them come on, 
 thick and threefold. The more their numbers, the fatter will 
 the fish below be, before to-morrow morning. Look there, 
 already ! ' 
 
 And already the bridge was swaying, and sinking^ beneath 
 their weight. The men, in jilaces, were ankle deep in water. 
 They rushed on all tlie more eagerly ; filled the sow, and 
 swarmed up to its roof. 
 
 Then, what with its own weight, what witli the weight of the 
 laden bridge which dragged upon it from beiiind, the huge sow 
 began to tilt backwards, and slide down the slimy bank. 
 
 The men on the top tried vainly to keep their footing ; to 
 hurl grapnels into the rampart ; to shoot ofl:" their quarrels and 
 arrows. 
 
 'You must be quick. Frenchmen,' shouted Hereward in deri- 
 sion, 'if you mean to come on board here.' 
 
 The French knew that Avell : and as Hereward spoke, two 
 panels in the front of the sow creaked on their hinges, and 
 dropped landward, forming two drawbridges, over which reeled 
 to the attack a close body of knights, mingled with soldiers 
 bearing scaling ladders. 
 
 They recoiled. Between the ends of the drawbridges and the 
 foot of the rampart was some two fathoms' breadth of black 
 ooze. The catastrophe which The Wake had foreseen was come, 
 and a shout of derision arose from the unseen defenders above. 
 
 ' Come on, leap it like men ! Send back for your horses, 
 knights, and ride them at it like bold huntsmen ! ' 
 
 The front rank could not but rush on for the pressure behind 
 forced them forward, Avhether they would or not. In a moment 
 they were wallowing waist deep ; trampled on ; disappearing 
 under their struggling comrades, who disappeared in their 
 turn. 
 
 ' Look, Torfrida ! If they plant their scaling ladders, it will 
 Ije on a foundation of their comrades' corpses.' 
 
 Torfrida gave one glance through the openings of tlie hoard- 
 ing upon the writhing mass below, and turned awaj^ in horror. 
 The men were not so merciful. Down between the hoarding 
 beams rained stones, javelins, arrows, increasing the agony and 
 death. The scaling ladders would not stand in the mire ; if 
 they had stood a moment, the struggles of the dying would have 
 thrown them down. And still fresh victims pressed on from 
 liehind, shouting ' Dex Aie ! On to the gold of Ely ! ' and still 
 the sow, under the weight, slipped farther and farther back into 
 the stream, and the foul gulf widened between besiegers and 
 besieged. 
 
 At last one scaling ladder was planted upon the bodies of the 
 dead, and hooked firmly on the gunwale of the hoarding. Ere 
 it could ])e liurled off again by the Englisli, it was so crowded 
 with men that even Ilereward's strength was insufficient to lift
 
 252 HEREWARD THE WAKE ciiAr. 
 
 it off! He stood at the top, ready to hew down the first comer ; 
 and he hewed him down. 
 
 But tiie French were not to be daunted. Man after man 
 dropped dead from the ladder top, — man after man took his 
 place ; sometimes scrambling over each other's backs. 
 
 The English, even in the insolence of victory, cheered them 
 with honest admiration. 'You are fellows worth fighting, you 
 French ! ' 
 
 'So we are,' shouted a knight, the first and last who crossed 
 that parapet ; for, thrusting Hereward back with a blow of his 
 sword-hilt, he staggered jDast him over the hoarding, and fell on 
 his knees. 
 
 A dozen men were upon him : but he was up again and 
 shouting — 
 
 ' To me, men-at-arms ! A Deda ! A Deda ! ' But no man 
 answered. 
 
 ' Yield ! ' quoth Hereward. 
 
 Sir Deda answered by a blow on Hereward's helmet, which 
 felled The Wake to his knees, and broke the sword into twenty 
 splinters. 
 
 ' Well hit ! ' said Hereward, as he rose. ' Don't touch him, 
 men ! this is my quarrel now. Yield, sir ! you have done 
 enough for your honour. It is madness to throw away your 
 life.' 
 
 The knight looked round on the fierce ring of faces, in the 
 midst of which he stood alone. 
 
 ' To none but The Wake.' 
 
 'The Wake ami' 
 
 'Ah,' said the knight, 'had I but hit a little harder ! ' 
 
 ' You would have broke your sword into more splinters. My 
 armour is enchanted. So yield like a reasonable and valiant 
 man.' 
 
 ' What care 1 1 ' said the knight, stepping on to the earth- 
 work, and sitting down quietly. 'I vowed to St. Mary and 
 King William that into Ely I would get this day ; and in Ely I 
 am ; so I have done my work.' 
 
 ' And now you shall taste — as such a gallant knight deserves 
 — the hospitality of Ely.' 
 
 It was Torfrida who spoke. 
 
 ' My husband's prisoners are mine ; and I, when I find them 
 such gallant knights as you are, have no lighter chains for them 
 than that which a lady's bower can afford.' 
 
 Sir Deda was going to make an equally courteous answer, 
 when over and above the shouts and curses of tlie combatants 
 rose a yell so keen, so dreadful, as made all hurry forward to 
 the rampart. 
 
 That whicli The Wake had foreseen was come at last. The 
 Ijridge, strained more and more by its living bui'den, and by 
 the falling tide, had parted, — not at the Ely end, where the
 
 XXIX HOW SIR DEDA BROUGHT NEWS FROM ELY 253 
 
 sliding of the sow took off the pressure, — but at the end nearest 
 the camp. One sideway roll it gave, and then, turning over, 
 engulfed in that foul stream the flower of Norman chivalry ; 
 leaving a line — a full quarter of a mile in length — of wretches 
 drowning in the dark water, or, more hideous still, in the 
 bottomless slime of peat and mud. 
 
 Thousands are said to have perished. Their armour and 
 weapons were found at times by delvers and dykers for cen- 
 turies after ; are found at times unto this day, beneath the rich 
 drained cornfields whicli now fill up that black half-mile ; or in 
 the bed of tlie narrow brook to which the Westwater, robbed of 
 its streams by the Bedford Level, has dwindled down at last. 
 
 William, they say, struck his tents and departed forthwith, 
 'groaning from deep grief of heart.' Eastward he went, and 
 encamped the remains of his army at Brandon, where he seems 
 to have begun tliat castle, the ruins of which still exist in 
 Weeting Park hard by. He put a line of sentinels along the 
 Rech-dyke, which men now call the Devil's Ditch ; and did his 
 best to blockade the isle, as he could not storm it. And so 
 ended the first battle of Aldreth. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 HOW SIR DEDA BKOUGHT NEWS FEOM ELY 
 
 A MONTH after the fight, there came into the camp at Brandon, 
 riding on an ambling pad, himself fat and well -liking, none 
 other than Sir Deda. 
 
 Boisterously he was received, as one alive from the dead ; and 
 questioned as to his adventures and sufierings. 
 
 ' Adventures I have had, and strange ones ; but as for suffer- 
 ings — instead of fetter -galls, I bring back, as you see, a new 
 suit of clothes ; instead of an empty and starved stomach, a 
 surfeit from good victuals and good liquor ; and whereas I went 
 into Ely on foot, I came out on a fast hackney.' 
 
 So into William's tent he went ; and there he told his tale. 
 
 'So, Deda, my friend ?' quoth the duke in higli good humour, 
 for he loved Deda. 'You seem to have been in good com- 
 pany 1 ' 
 
 'Never in better, sire, save in your presence. Of the earls 
 and knights in Ely, all I can say is, God's pity that they are 
 rebels; for more gallant and courteous knights or more perfect 
 warriors never saw I either in Normandy or at Constanti- 
 nople, among the Varangers themselves.' 
 
 'Eh 1 and wliat are the names of these gallants, for you have 
 used your eyes and ears, of course ? ' 
 
 'Edwin and Morcar, the earls — two fine young lads.' 
 
 ' I know it. Go on,' and a aliade passed over William's brow
 
 254 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 as lie thouglit of his own falsehood, and of his fair daughter, 
 weeping in vain for the fair bridegroom whom he had promised 
 to her. 
 
 ' Siward Barn, as they call him, the boy Orgar, and Thurkil 
 Barn. Those are the knights. Egelwin, Bishop of Durham, is 
 there too ; and besides them all, and above them all, Hereward 
 the Wake. The like of that knight I may have seen. His 
 better saw I never.' 
 
 ' Sir fool ! ' said Earl Warrenne, who had not yet — small blame 
 to him — forgotten his brother's death. ' They have soused thy 
 brains with their muddy ale, till thou knowest not friend from 
 foe. What, hast thou to come hither praising up to the king's 
 majesty such an outlawed villain as that, with whom no honest 
 knight would keep company?' 
 
 ' If you. Earl Warrenne, ever found Deda drunk or lying, it 
 is more than the king here has done.' 
 
 ' Let him speak, earl,' said William. ' I have not an honester 
 man in my camp ; and he speaks for my information, not for 
 yours.' 
 
 ' Then for yours will I speak, sir king. These men treated 
 me knightly, and sent me away without ransom.' 
 
 ' They had an eye to their own profit, it seems,' grumbled the 
 earl. 
 
 ' But force me they did to swear on the holy Gospels that I 
 should tell your majesty the truth, the whole truth, and nothing 
 but the truth. And I keep my oath,' quoth Deda. 
 
 ' Go on, then, without fear or favour. Are there any other 
 men of note in the island ? ' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'Are they in want of provisions V 
 
 'Look how they have fattened me.' 
 
 ' Wliat do they complain of ? ' 
 
 ' I will tell you, sir king. The monks, like many more, took 
 fright at the coming over of our French men of God to set right 
 all their filthy barbarous ways ; and that is why they threw Ely 
 open to tlie rebels.' 
 
 ' I will be even with the sots,' quoth William. 
 
 ' However, they think that danger blown over just now ; for 
 they have a story among them, which, as my lord the king never 
 heard before, he may as well hear now.' 
 
 'Eh?' 
 
 ' How your majesty should have sent across the sea a whole 
 shipload of French monks.' 
 
 'That have I, and will more, till I reduce these swine into 
 something like obedience to his Holiness of Eome.' 
 
 'Ah, but your majesty has not heard how one Bruman, a 
 valiant Engiisli knight, was sailing on the sea and caught those 
 monks. Whereon he tied a great sack to the sIuid's head, and 
 cut the bottom out, and made every one of those monks get into
 
 XXIX HOW SIR DEDA BROUGHT NEWS FROM ELY 255 
 
 that sack and so fall through into the sea ; whereby he rid the 
 monks of Ely of their rivals.' 
 
 ' Pish ! why tell me such an old wives' fable, knight ? ' 
 
 'Because the monks believe that old wives' fable, and are 
 stout-hearted and stiff' necked accordingly.' 
 
 'The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church,' said 
 William's chaplain, a pupil and friend of Lanfranc : ' and if 
 these men of Belial drowned every man of God in Normandy, 
 ten would spring up in their places to convert this benighted 
 and besotted land of Simonites and Balaamites, whose priests, 
 like the brutes which perish, scruple not to defile themselves, 
 and the service of the altar, with things which they impudently 
 call their wives.' 
 
 ' We know that, good chaplain,' quoth William impatiently. 
 He had enough of that language from Lanfranc himself ; and, 
 moreover, was thinking more of the isle of Ely than of the celi- 
 bacy of the clergy. 
 
 'Well, Sir Deda?' 
 
 ' So they liave got together all their kin ; for among these 
 monks every one is kin to a thane, or knight, or even an earl : 
 and there they are, brother by brother, cousin by cousin, knee to 
 knee, and back to back, like a pack of wolves, and that in a 
 hold which you will not enter yet awhile.' 
 
 ' Does my friend Deda doubt his duke's skill at last ? ' 
 
 'Sir duke — sir king I mean now, for king you are and 
 deserve to be — I know what you can do. I remember how we 
 took England at one blow on Senlac field : but see you here, sir 
 king, how will you take an island with four such saints to guard 
 it as St. Etheldreda, St. Withberga, St. Sexberga, and St. Ermen- 
 ilda?' 
 
 'By promising the holy ladies,' said William, with a smile, 'to 
 lionour them better than ever did yet an English swine.' 
 
 'Amen : but again, how will you take an island where four 
 kings such as you (if the world would liold four such at once) 
 could not stop one churl from ploughing the land, or one bird- 
 catcher from setting lime-twigs 'i ' ^ 
 
 ' And what if I cannot stop the birdcatchers ? Do they ex- 
 pect to lime Frenchmen as easily as sparrows 'i ' 
 
 ' Sparrows ! It is not sparrows that I have been fattening 
 on this last montli. I tell you, sire, I have seen wild fowl 
 alone in that island enough to feed them all the year round. I 
 was there in the moulting time, and saw them take — one day 
 one hundred, one two liundred ; and once, as I am a belted 
 knight, a thousand duck out of one single mere.^ There is a 
 
 ^ I have followed Deda's account of Ely and its folk, as given both in 
 the Peterborough MSS. and in the Liber Eliensis, almost word for word 
 througliout. 
 
 ^ Ficedulre (beccaficos, by whieli the good monk means wheatears and 
 such small birds), coots, divers, ' watercrows,' cranes, and ducks.
 
 256 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 wood tliere, with lierons sprawling about the tree-tops — I 
 did not think tliere were so many in the world ; otters and 
 weasels, ermines and jDole-cats, for fur robes ; and lisli for Lent 
 and Fridays in every puddle and leat — pike and perch, roach 
 and eels, on every old wife's table ; while the knights think 
 scorn of anything worse than smelt and burbot.^ 
 
 ' Splendeur Dex ! ' quoth William, who, Norman-like, did not 
 dislike a good dinner. 'I must keep Lent in Ely before I die.' 
 
 'Then you had best make peace with the burbot-eating 
 knights, my lord.' 
 
 ' But have they flesh-meat 1 ' 
 
 ' The island is half of it a garden — richer land, they say, is 
 none in these realms, and I believe it : but besides that, there is 
 a deer-park there with a thousand head in it, red and fallow, be- 
 sides liares ; and plenty of swine and goats- in woods, and sheep 
 and cattle : and if they fail there are plenty more to be got, they 
 know where.' 
 
 'They know where? Do you, sir knight?' asked William 
 keenly. 
 
 ' Out of every little island in their fens, for forty miles on end. 
 There are the herds fattening themselves on the richest pastures 
 in the land, and no man needing to herd them, for they are all 
 safe among dykes and meres.' 
 
 'I will make my boats sweep tlieir fens clear of every 
 head ' 
 
 ' Take care, my lord king, lest never a boat come back from 
 that errand. With their narrow flat-bottomed punts, cut out of 
 a single log, and their leaping-poles, wherewith they fly over 
 dykes of thirty feet in width — they can ambuscade in those 
 reed-beds and alder-beds, kill whom they will, and then flee 
 away through the marsh, like so many horse-flies. And if not, 
 one trick have they left, wliich they never try save when driven 
 into a corner : but from that may all saints save us ! ' 
 
 'What then?' 
 
 ' Firing the reeds.' 
 
 'And destroying their own cover?' 
 
 ' True : therefore they will only do it in despair.' 
 
 ' Then to despair will I drive them, and try their worst. So 
 these monks ai'e as stout rebels as the earls ? ' 
 
 ' I only say what I saw. At the hall-table there dined each 
 day maybe some fifty belted knights, with every one a monk 
 
 ^ ' Innumerable eels, great water-wolves and pickerel, perches, roaches, 
 burbots, and murffinas, which we call water-serpents.' (These last seem 
 to be mythical, unless the silurus glanis still lingered, as it may have done, 
 in the waters of tlie Ouse.) 'Sometimes also isicii (smelts, I presume, as 
 they are still abundant in the Ouse) ' and the royal fish rumbus ' (turbot) : 
 surely a misnomer for the sturgeon. 
 
 - That the goat as well as the stag was common in tlie fens, the horns 
 found in peat and gravel testify.
 
 XXIX HOW SIR DEDA BROUGHT NEWS FROM ELY 257 
 
 next to him ; and at tlie high table the abbot, and the earls, and 
 Hereward and his lady. And behind each knight, and each 
 monk likewise, hung against the wall, lance and shield, helmet 
 and hauberk, sword and axe.' 
 
 ' To monk as well as knight 1 ' 
 
 'As I am a knight myself; and were as well used, too, for 
 aught I saw. The monks took turns with the knights as 
 sentries, and as foragers likewise ; and the knights themselves 
 told me opeidy, the monks were as good men as they.' 
 
 ' As wicked, you mean,' groaned the chaplain. ' O accursed 
 and bloodthirsty race, why does not the earth open and 
 swallow you, with Korah, Dathan, and Abiram ? ' 
 
 ' They would not care,' quoth Deda. ' They are born and bred 
 in the bottomless pit already. They would jump over, or floun- 
 der out, as they do to their own bogs every day.' 
 
 ' You speak irreverently, my friend,' quoth William. 
 
 'Ask those who are in camp, and not me. As for whither 
 they went, or how, the English were not likely to tell me. All 
 that I know is, that I saw fresh cattle come in every few days, 
 and fresh farms burnt, too, on the Norfolk side. There were 
 farms burning only last night, between here and Cambridge. 
 Ask your sentinels on the Eech-dyke how that came about ! ' ^ 
 
 ' I can answer that,' quoth a voice from the other end of the 
 tent. ' I was on the Rech-dyke last night, close down to the fen 
 — worse luck and shame for me.' 
 
 'Answer, then ! ' quoth William, with one of his fiercest oaths, 
 glad to have some one on whom he could turn his rage and dis- 
 appointment. 
 
 ' There came seven men in a boat up from Ely yestereven, 
 and five of them were monks ; they came up from Burwell fen, 
 and plundered and burnt Burwell town.' 
 
 'And wliere were all you mighty men of war ? ' 
 
 'Ten of ours ran down to stop them, with Richard, Viscount 
 Osbert's nephew, at their head. The villains came at a foot's 
 pace up the Rech-dyke, and attacked them at lance-point ; and 
 before we could get to them ' 
 
 ' Thy men had run, of course.' 
 
 ' They were every one dead or wounded, save Richard ; and lie 
 was fighting single-handed with an Englishman, while the other 
 six stood around, and looked on.' 
 
 'Then they fouglit fairly?; said William. 
 
 ' As fairly, to do them justice, as if they had been Frenchmen, 
 and not English churls. As we came down along the dyke, a 
 little man of tliem steps between the two, and strikes up their 
 
 ^ See § 23 of the De Gcstis Hcreivardi, presumed to be l)y Richard of 
 Ely, 'And wliile lie liad lianlly finished liis speech,' etc. Tliose who love 
 to investigate the growth of myths, may profitably amuse tlieniselves by 
 comparing that account with § 106 of the Liber Eliensis. The omissions 
 will be as instructive as the insertions. 
 
 S II. r. w.
 
 258 HEREWARD THE AVAKE chap. 
 
 swords as if they had been two i-eeds. " Come ! " cries he, " enough 
 of this. You are two stout knights well matched, and you can 
 fight out this any other day ; " and away he and his men go down 
 the dyke end to the water.' 
 
 ' Leaving Richard safe ? ' 
 
 ' Wounded a little — but safe enough.' 
 
 ' And then ? ' 
 
 ' We followed them to tlie boat as hard as we could ; killed 
 one of their boatmen with a javelin, and caught another.' 
 
 ' Knightly done ! ' and William swore an awful oath, ' and 
 worthy of valiant Frenchmen. These English set you the ex- 
 ample of chivalry by letting your comrade tight his own battle 
 fairly, instead of setting on him all together ; and you repay 
 them by hunting them down with darts, because you dare not 
 go within sword's-stroke of better men than yourselves. Go. I 
 am ashamed of you. No, stay. Where is your prisoner ? For, 
 Splendeur Dex, I will send him back safe and sound in return 
 for Deda, to tell the knights of Ely that if they know so well 
 the courtesies of war, William of Rouen does too.' 
 
 ' The prisoner, sire,' quoth the knight, trembling, ' is — is ' 
 
 ' You have not murdered him 1 ' 
 
 ' Heaven foi-bid ! but ' 
 
 ' He broke his bonds and escaped 1 ' 
 
 ' Gnawed them through, sire, as we supposed, and escaped 
 through the mire in the dark, after the fashion of these accursed 
 frogs of Girvians.' 
 
 ' But did he tell you nought ere he bade you good morning 1 ' 
 
 ' He told us the names of all the seven. He that beat down 
 the swords was Hereward himself.' 
 
 ' I thought as much. When shall I have that fellow at my 
 side?' 
 
 ' He that fought Richard was one Wenoch.' 
 
 ' I have heard of liim.' 
 
 ' He that we took was Azer the Hardy, a monk of Nicole — 
 Licole. And the rest were Turstan the Younger ; one Siward, 
 another monk ; Leofric the deacon, Hereward's minstrel ; and 
 Boter, the traitor monk of St. Edmund's.' 
 
 ' And if I catch them,' quoth William, ' I will make an abbot 
 of every one of them.' 
 
 ' Sire ? ' quoth the chaplain, in a deprecating tone. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 HOW HEREWARD PLAYED THE POTTER ; AND HOW HE CHEATED 
 
 THE KING 
 
 They of Ely were now much straitened, being shut in both by 
 land and water ; and what was to be done, either by themselves
 
 XXX HOW HEREWARD PLAYED THE POTTER 259 
 
 or by the king, they knew not. Woukl William simply starve 
 them ; or at least inflict on them so perpetual a Lent — for of 
 fish there could be no lack, even if they ate or drove away all 
 the fowl — as would tame down their proud spirits ; which a diet 
 of fish and vegetables, from some ludicrous theory of monastic 
 physicians, was supposed to do 1 ^ Or was he gathering vast 
 armies, from they knew not whence, to try, once and for all, 
 another assault on the island — it might be from several points 
 at once ? 
 
 They must send out a spy, and find out news from the outer 
 woi'ld, if news were to be gotten. But who would go 1 
 
 So asked the bishop, and the abbot, and the earls, in council 
 in the abbot's lodging. 
 
 Torf rida was among them. She was always among them now. 
 She was their Alruna-wife, their wise woman, whose counsels 
 all received as more than human. 
 
 'I will go,' said she, rising up like a goddess on Olympus. 
 ' I will cut off* my hair, and put on boy's clothes, and smirch my- 
 self brown with walnut-leaves ; and I will go. I can talk their 
 French tongue. I know their French ways ; and as for a story 
 to cover my journey and my doings, trust a woman's wit to 
 invent that.' 
 
 They looked at lier, with delight in her courage, but witli 
 doubt. 
 
 ' If William's Frencli grooms got hold of you, Torf rida, it 
 would not be a little walnut-brown which would hide you,' said 
 Hereward. 'But it is like you to offer — worthy of you, who 
 liave no peer.' 
 
 ' That she has not,' quoth churchmen and soldiers alike. 
 
 'Nevertheless — to send you would be to send Tlie Wake's 
 praying half ; and that would be bad religion. The Wake's 
 fighting half is going, while you pray here as well as watch.' 
 
 ' Uncle, uncle ! ' said the young earls, ' send Winter, Gery, 
 Leofwin Prat, any of your good men : but not yourself. If we 
 lose you, we lose our liead and our king.' 
 
 And all becged Hereward to let any man go, rather than him- 
 self. 
 
 ' I am going, lords and knights ; and what Hereward says lie 
 does. It is one day to Brandon. It may be two days back ; for 
 if I miscarry — as I most likely shall — I must come home round 
 about. On the fourth day, you shall hear of me or from me. 
 Come with me, Torf rida.' 
 
 And he strode out. 
 
 He cropped his golden locks, he cropped his golden beard ; 
 and Torfrida wept, as she cropi)ed them, half with fear for him, 
 lialf for sorrow over his shorn glories. 
 
 1 The Cornish — the stoutest, tallest, and most prohfic race of the South 
 — live on hardly anything else but fish and vegetables.
 
 260 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 'I am no Samson, my lady; my strength lieth not in my 
 locks. Now for some rascal's clothes — as little dirty as you can 
 get me, for fear of compaiTy.' 
 
 And Hereward jjut on iiltliy garments ; and taking mare 
 Swallow witli him, got into a barge and went across the river 
 to Soham. 
 
 He could not go down the Great Ouse, and up the Little 
 Ouse, which was liis easiest way, for the French held all the 
 river below the isle ; and, besides, to have come straight from 
 Ely might cause suspicion. So he went down to Fordham, and 
 crossed the Lark at Mildenliall ; and just before he got to Mil- 
 denhall, he met a potter carrying pots upon a pony. 
 
 'Halt, my stout churl,' quoth he, 'and put thy pots on my 
 mare's back.' 
 
 'Tlie man who wants them must fight for them,' quoth that 
 stout churl, I'aising a heavy statf. 
 
 ' Then here is he that will,' quoth Hereward ; and^ jumping 
 off his mare, he twisted the stafi" out of the potter's hands, and 
 knocked him down therewith. 
 
 'That will teach thee to know an Englishman when thou 
 seest him.' 
 
 ' I have met my master,' quoth the churl, rubbing his head. 
 ' But dog does not eat dog ; and it is hard to be robbed by an 
 Englisliman, after being robbed a dozen times by the French.' 
 
 ' I will not rolj thee. Tliere is a silver penny for thy pots and 
 thy coat — for that I must have likewise. And if thou tellest to 
 mortal man aught about tliis, I will find those who will cut thee 
 up for dogs' meat ; but if not, then turn thy horse's head and 
 ride back to Ely, if thou canst cross the water, and say what 
 has befallen tliee ; and thou wilt find there an abbot who will 
 give thee another penny for thy news.' 
 
 So Hereward took the pots, and the potter's clay-greased coat, 
 and went on through Mildenhall, 'crying,' saith the chronicler, 
 ' after the manner of potters, in the English tongue, " Pots ! 
 pots ! good pots and pans ! " ' 
 
 But when he got through Mildenhall, and well into the rabbit- 
 warrens, he gave mare Swallow a kick, and went over the lieath 
 so fast northward, that his pots danced such a dance as broke 
 half of them before he got to Brandon. 
 
 ' Never mind,' quoth lie, ' they will think that I have sold 
 them.' And when he neai-ed Brandon he pulled up, sorted his 
 pots, kept the whole ones, threw the shreds at the rabbits, and 
 walked on into Brandon solemnly, leading the mare, and crying 
 ' Pots ! ' 
 
 So ' semper marcida et deformis aspectu ' — lean and ill-look- 
 ing — was tliat famous mare, says the chronicler, that no one 
 would suspect her splendid powers, or take her for anything but 
 a potter's nag, when she was caparisoned in proper character. 
 Hereward felt thoroughly at home in his part ; as able to play
 
 XXX HOW HEREWARD PLAYED THE POTTER 261 
 
 the Englishman wliich lie was by rearing, as the Frenchman 
 which he was by education. He was full of heart and happy. 
 He enjoyed the keen fresh air of the warrens ; he enjoyed the 
 i-amble out of tlie isle, in which he had been cooped up so long ; 
 he enjoyed the jest of the thing — disguise, stratagem, adventure, 
 danger. And so did the English, who adored him. None of The 
 Wake's crafty deeds is told so carefully and lovingly ; and none, 
 doubt it not, was so often sung in after years by farm-house 
 hearths, or in the outlaws' lodge, as this. Eobin Hood himself 
 may have trolled out many a time, in doggrel strain, how Here- 
 ward played the potter. 
 
 And he came to Brandon, to the ' king's court,' from which 
 William could command the streams of Wissey and Little Ouse, 
 with all their fens ; and saw with a curse the new buildings of 
 Weeting Castle — like the rest, of which Sir F. Palgrave elo- 
 quently says — ' New, and strong, and cruel in their strength — 
 how the Englishman must have loathed the damp smell of the 
 fresh mortar, and the sight of the heaps of rubble, and the chip- 
 pings of the stone, and the blurring of the lime upon the green 
 sward ; and how hopeless he must have felt when the great 
 gates opened, and the wains were drawn in, heavily laden witli 
 the salted beeves, and the sacks of corn and meal furnished by 
 the royal demesnes, the manors which had belonged to Edward 
 the Confessor, now the spoil of the stranger : and wlien he 
 looked into the castle court, thronged by the soldiers in bright 
 mail, and heard the carpenters working upon the ordnance — 
 every blow and stroke, even of the hammer or mallet, speaking 
 the language of defiance.' 
 
 These things The Wake saw : and felt, like others, hopeless 
 for the moment. And there rang in his ears his own message 
 to William. 'When thou art king of all England, I will put 
 my hands between thine, and be thy man.' 
 
 ' He is not king of all England yet ! ' thought he again ; and 
 drew himself up so proudly, that one passing by jeered him — 
 
 'There goes a bold swaggerer enough, to be selling pots 
 abroad.' The Wake slouched his shoulders ; and looked as mean 
 a churl as ever. Next he cast about for a night's lodging, for it 
 was dark. 
 
 Outside the town was a wretched cabin of mud and turf — 
 sucli a one as Irish folk live in to this day ; and Hereward said 
 to himself, ' This is Ijad enough to be good enough for me.' 
 
 So he knocked at the door ; and knocked till it was opened 
 and a hideous old crone put out her head. 
 
 ' Who wants to see me at this time of night ? ' 
 
 ' Any one would, who had heard how beautiful you are. Do 
 you want any pots ? ' 
 
 'Pots? What have I to do with pots, thou saucy fellow? I 
 thought it was some one wanting a cliann.' And she .shut the 
 door.
 
 262 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 'A charm?' thought Hereward. 'Maybe she can tell me 
 news, if slie be a witch. They are shrewd souls, these witches, 
 and know more than they tell. And if I can get any news, I 
 care not if Satan brings it in person.' 
 
 So he knocked again, till the old woman looked out once 
 more, and bade him angrily be off. 
 
 ' But I am belated here, good dame, and afraid of tlie French. 
 And I will give thee the best bit of clay on my mare's back— pot 
 —pan— panshin— crock— jug, or what thou wilt, for a night's 
 lodging.' 
 
 ' Have you any little jars— jars no longer than my hand 1 ' 
 asked she • for she used them in her trade, and liad broken one 
 of late : but to pay for one, she had neither money nor mind. 
 So she agreed to let Hereward sleep there, for the value of two 
 jars.— 'But what of that ugly brute of a horse of thine ?' 
 ' Slie will do well enough in the turf-shed.' 
 'Tlien thou must pay witli a panshin.' 
 
 ' Ugh ! ' groaned Hereward ; ' thou drivest a hard bargain, for 
 an Englishwoman, with a poor Englishman.' 
 ' How knowest thou that I am English 1 ' 
 
 'So much the better if thou art not,' thought Hereward ; and 
 bargained witli her for a panshin against a lodging for the horse 
 in tlie turf-house, and a bottle of bad hay. 
 
 Then he went in, bringing his panniers with him with osten- 
 tatious care. 
 
 ' Thou canst sleep there on the rushes. I have nought to give 
 thee to eat.' 
 
 ' Nought needs nought,' said Hereward ; threw himself 
 down on a bundle of rush, and in a few minutes snored 
 loudly. 
 
 But he was never less asleep. He looked round the whole 
 place ; and he listened to every word. 
 
 The devil, as usual, was a bad paymaster ; for the witch's 
 cabin seemed only somewhat more miserable than that of other 
 old women. The floor was mud, the rafters unceiled ; the stars 
 shone through the turf roof. The only hint of her trade was a 
 hanging shelf, on which stood five or six little earthen jars, and 
 a few packets of leaves. A parchment, scrawled with characters 
 which the owner herself probably did not understand, hung 
 against the cob wall ; and a human skull — probably used only 
 to f rigliten her patients — dangled from the roof -tree. 
 
 But in a corner, stuck against the wall, was something which 
 cliilled Hereward's blood a little ; — a dried human hand, which he 
 knew must have been stolen off tlie gallows, gripping in its 
 fleshless fingers a candle, wliicli he knew was made of human 
 fat. That candle, he knew, duly lighted and carried, would enable 
 the witch to walk unseen into any house on earth, yea, through 
 the court of King William himself, while it drowned all men 
 in preternatural slumber.
 
 XXX HOW HEREWARD PLAYED THE POTTER 263 
 
 Hereward was very much frightened. He believed devoutly 
 in the powers of a witch. 
 
 So he trembled on his ruslies, and wished himself safe 
 througli that adventure, without being turned into a hare or a 
 wolf. 
 
 'I would sooner be a wolf than a hare, of course : but — who 
 comes here 1 ' 
 
 And to the first old crone, who sat winking her bleared eyes, 
 and warming her bleared hands over a little heap of peat in 
 the middle of the cabin, entered another crone, if jjossible uglier. 
 
 ' Two of them ! If I am not roasted and eaten this night, I 
 am a lucky man.' 
 
 And Hereward crossed himself devoutly, and invoked St. 
 Ethelfrida of Ely, St. Guthlac of Crowland, St. Felix of Eamsey 
 — to which last saint, he recollected, he had been somewhat 
 remiss : but above all, St. Peter of Peterborough, whose trea- 
 sures he had given to the Danes. And he argued stoutly with 
 St. Peter and with his own conscience, that the means sanctify 
 the end, and that he had done it all for the best. 
 
 ' If thou wilt help me out of this strait, and the rest, blessed 
 apostle, I will give thee — I will go to Constantinople but what 
 I will win it — a golden table, twice as fine as those villains 
 carried off ; and one of the Bourne manors — Witham — or Toft — 
 or Mainthorpe — whichever pleases thee best, in full fee ; and a 
 — and a ' 
 
 But while Hereward was casting in his mind what gewgaw 
 further might suflace to appease the apostle, he was recalled to 
 business and common sense by hearing the two old hags talk to 
 each other in French. 
 
 His heart leaped for joy, and he forgot St. Peter utterly. 
 
 ' Well, how have you sped ? Have you seen the king ? ' 
 
 ' No ; but Ivo Taillebois. Eh ? Who the foul fiend have you 
 lying there?' 
 
 ' Only an English brute. He cannot understand us. Talk 
 on : only don't wake the hog. Have you got the gold 1 ' 
 
 ' Never mind.' 
 
 Then there was a grumbling and a quarrelling, from which 
 Hereward understood that the gold was to ]je shared between 
 them. 
 
 ' But it is a bit of a chain. To cut it will spoil it.' 
 
 The other insisted ; and he heard them chop the gold chain in 
 two. 
 
 ' And is this all r 
 
 ' I had work enough to get tliat. He said, no play no pay ; 
 and ho would give it me after the isle was taken. But I told 
 him my spirit was a Jewish spirit, that used to serve Solomon 
 the Wise ; and he would not serve me, much less come over the 
 sea from Normandy, unless he smelt gold ; for he loved it like 
 any Jew.'
 
 2Gi HERE WARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' And what did you tell him then 1 ' 
 
 ' That the king must go back to Aldreth again ; for only from 
 thence would he take the isle ; for — and that was true enougli 
 — I dreamt I saw all the water of Aldreth full of wolves, clam- 
 bering over into the island on each other's backs.' 
 
 ' That means that some of them will be drowned.' 
 
 ' Let them drown. I left him to hnd out that part of the 
 dream himself. Then I told him liow he must make another 
 causeway, bigger and stronger than the last, and a tower on 
 whicli I could stand and curse the English. And I promised 
 him to bring a storm right in the faces of the English, so that 
 they could neither fight nor see.' 
 
 ' But if the storm does not come ? ' 
 
 ' It will come. I know the signs of the sky — who better ? — 
 and the weatlier will break up in a week. Therefore I told him 
 he must begin his works at once, before the rain came on ; and 
 that we would go and ask tlie guardian of the well ^ to tell us 
 the fortunate day for attacking.' 
 
 ' That is my business,' said the other; 'and my spirit likes 
 the smell of gold as well as yours. Little you would have got 
 from me, if you had not given me half the chain.' 
 
 Then the two rose. 
 
 ' Let us see whether the English hog is asleep.' 
 
 One of them came and listened to Hereward's breathing, and 
 put her hand upon his chest. His hair stood on end ; a cold 
 sweat came over him. But he snored more loudly than ever. 
 
 The two old crones went out satisfied. Then Hereward rose, 
 and glided after them. 
 
 They went down a meadow to a little well, which Hereward 
 liad marked as he rode thither hung round witli bits of rag and 
 flowers, as similar ' holy wells ' are decorated in Ireland to this 
 day. 
 
 He hid behind a hedge, and watched them stooping over the 
 well, mumbling he knew not what of cantrij^s. 
 
 Then there was a silence, and a tinkling sound as of water. 
 
 ' Once — twice — thrice,' counted the witches. Nine tintes he 
 counted the tinkling sound. 
 
 ' Tlie ninth day — the ninth day, and the king shall take Ely,' 
 said one in a cracked scream, rising and shaking her fist towards 
 the isle. 
 
 Hereward was more than half-minded to have put liis dagger 
 — the only weapon which he had — into the two old beldames. 
 But the fear of an outcry kept him still. He liad found out 
 already so much, that he was determined to find out more. So 
 to-morrow he would go up to the court itself, and take what 
 luck sent. 
 
 He slipped back to the cabin, and lay down again ; and as 
 
 ^ ' Custodera fontiun;, ' tlie guardian spirit.
 
 XXX HOW HEREWARD PLAYED THE POTTER 265 
 
 soon as he had seen the two old crones safe asleep, fell asleep 
 lumself, and was so tii-ed that he laid till the sun was high. 
 
 ' Get up ! ' screamed the old dame at last, kicking him, ' or 
 I shall make you give me another crock for a double night's rest.' 
 
 He paid his lodging, put the panniers on the mare, and went 
 on crying pots. 
 
 When he came to the outer gateway of the court, he tied up the 
 mare, and carried the crockery in on his own back boldly. The 
 scullions saw him ; and called him into the kitchen to see his 
 crockery, without the least intention of paying for what they 
 took. 
 
 A man of rank belonging to the court came in, and stared 
 fixedly at Hereward. 
 
 'You are mightily like that villain Hereward, man,' quoth 
 he. 
 
 ' Anon ? ' asked Hereward, looking as stupid as he could. 
 
 ' If it were not for his brown face and his short hair, he is as 
 like the fellow as a churl can be to a knight.' 
 
 ' Bring him into the hall,' quoth another ; ' and let us see if 
 any man knows him.' 
 
 Into the great hall he was brought, and stared at by knights 
 and squires. He bent his knee.s, rounded his shoulders, and 
 made himself look as mean as he could. 
 
 Ivo Taillebois and Earl Warrenne came down and had a look 
 at him. 
 
 ' Hereward 1 ' said Ivo. ' I will warrant that little slouching 
 cur is not he. Hereward must be lialf as big again, if it be true 
 that he can kill a man with one blow of his fist.' 
 
 'You may try the truth of that for yourself some day,' 
 thought Hereward. 
 
 ' Does any one here talk English 1 Let us question the fellow,' 
 said Earl Warrenne. 
 
 ' Hereward ? Hereward 1 Who wants to know about that 
 villain 1 ' answered the potter, as soon as he was asked in English. 
 ' Would to heaven he were here, and I could see some of you 
 noble knights and earls paying him for me ; for I owe him more 
 than ever I shall pay myself.' 
 
 ' What does he mean 1 ' 
 
 ' He came out of the isle ten days ago, nigh on to evening, 
 and di'ove off a cow of mine and four sheep, which was all my 
 living, noble knights, save these pots.' 
 
 'And where is he since ? ' 
 
 'In the isle, my lords, well-nigh starved, and his folk falling 
 away from him daily, from hunger and ague-fits. I doubt if 
 there be a hundred sound men left in Ely.' 
 
 'Have you been in tliither, then, villain?' 
 
 ' Heaven forbid ! I in Ely 1 I in the wolf's den 1 If I went 
 in with naught but my skin, they would have it off me before I 
 got out again. Ah, if your lordships would but come down, and
 
 266 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 make an end of liiui once for all ; for he is a great tyrant, and 
 terrible, and devours us poor folk like so many mites in his 
 cheese.' 
 
 'Take this babbler into the kitchen, and feed him,' quoth 
 Earl Warrenne ; and so the colloquy ended. 
 
 Into the kitchen again the potter went. The king's luncheon 
 was preparing ; so he listened to the chatter ; and picked up 
 this, at least, which was valuable to him : .that the witches' story 
 was true ; that a great attack would be made from Aldreth : 
 that boats had been ordered up tlie river to Cotinglade,i and 
 pioneers and entrenching tools were to be sent on that day to 
 the old causeway, 
 
 But soon he had to take care of himself. Earl Warrenne's 
 commands to feed him were construed by the cook-boys and 
 scullions into a command to make him drunk likewise. To make 
 a laughing-stock of an Englishman was too tempting a jest to 
 be resisted ; and Hereward was drenched (says the chronicler) 
 with wine and beer, and sorely baited and badgered. At last 
 one rascal hit upon a notable plan. 
 
 'Pluck out the English hog's hair and beard, and put him 
 blindfold in the midst of his pots, and see what a smash we 
 shall have.' 
 
 Hereward pretended not to understand the words, which were 
 spoken in French ; but when they were interpreted to him, he 
 grew somewhat red about the ears. 
 
 Submit he would not. But if he defended himself, and made 
 an uproar in the king's court, he might very likely find himself 
 riding Odin's horse before the hour was out. However, happily 
 for him, tlie wine and beer had made him stout of heart, and 
 when one fellow laid hold of his beard, he resisted sturdily. 
 
 The man struck him, and that hard. Hereward, hot of 
 temper, and careless of life, struck him again, right under the 
 ear. 
 
 The fellow dropped for dead. 
 
 Up leapt cook-boys, scullions, ' lecheurs ' (who hung about 
 the kitchen to_ ' lecher,' lick the platters), and all the foul- 
 moutlied rascality of a great mediaeval household, and attacked 
 Hereward 'cum furcis et tridentibus,' with forks and flesh- 
 hooks. 
 
 Then was Hereward aware of a great broach, or spit, before 
 the fire ; and recollecting how he had used such an one as a boy 
 against the monks of Peterborough, was minded to use it against 
 the cooks of Brandon ; which he did so heartily, that in a few 
 moments he had killed one, and driven the others backward in 
 a heajj. 
 
 But his case was hopeless. He was soon overpowered by 
 
 ^ Seemingly a lade, leat, or canal, through Cottenham Fen to the 
 Westwater ; x)robably a Roman work, now obliterated.
 
 XXX HOW HEREWARD PLAYED THE POTTER 267 
 
 numbers from outside, and dragged into the hall, to receive 
 judgment for the mortal crime of slaying a man within the 
 precincts of the court. 
 
 He kept up heart. He knew that the king was there ; he 
 knew that he should most likely get justice from the king. 
 If not, he could but discover himself, and so save his life, for 
 that William would kill him willingly, he did not believe. 
 
 So he went in boldly and willingly, and up the hall, where, 
 on the dais, stood William the Norman. 
 
 William had finislied his luncheon, and was standing at the 
 board-side. A page held water in a silver basin, in which he 
 was washing his hands. Two more knelt, and laced his long 
 boots ; for he was, as always, going a-hunting. 
 
 Then Herewarcl looked at the face of the great man, and felt 
 at once that it was the face of the greatest man whom he had 
 ever met. 
 
 ' I am not that man's match,' said he to himself. ' Perhaps it 
 will all end in being his man, and he my master.' 
 
 ' Silence, knaves ! ' said William, ' and speak one of you at a 
 time. How came this 1 ' 
 
 ' A likely story, forsooth ! ' said he, when he had heard. ' A 
 poor English potter comes into my court, and murders my men 
 under my very eyes for mere sport. I do not believe you, 
 rascals ! You, cliurl,' and he spoke througli an English inter- 
 preter, 'tell me your tale, and justice you shall have or take, as 
 you deserve. I am the King of England, man, and I know your 
 tongue, though I speak it not yet, more pity.' 
 
 Hereward fell on his knees. 
 
 ' If you are indeed my lord the king, then I am safe ; for 
 there is justice in you : at least so all men say.' And he told 
 his tale manfully. 
 
 'Splendeur Dex ! but this is a far likelier story, and I believe 
 it. Hark you, you ruffians ! Here am I, trying to conciliate 
 tliese English by justice and mercy, whenever they will let me : 
 and here are you outraging them, and driving them mad and 
 desperate, just that you may get a handle against them, and 
 thus rob the poor wretches and drive them into the forest. 
 From the lowest to the highest — from Ivo Taillebois there, 
 down to you cook-boys — you are all at the same game. And I 
 will stop it ! The next time I hear of outrage to unarmed man 
 or harmless woman, I will hang that culprit, were he Odo my 
 brotlier himself.' 
 
 This excellent speecli was enforced witli oaths so strange and 
 terrible, that Ivo Tailloljois shook in his lioots ; and tiie chaplain 
 prayed fervently that the roof might not fall in on their heads. 
 
 ' Thou smilest, man ? ' said William quickly, to the kneeling 
 Hereward. ' So thou understandest French 1 ' 
 
 'A few words only, most gracious king, which we potters 
 l^ick up, wandering everywhere with our wares,' said Hereward,
 
 268 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 speaking in French ; for so keen was William's eye, that he 
 tliought it safer to play no tricks with him. 
 
 Nevertheless, he made his French so execrable, that the very 
 scullions grinned, in spite of their fear. 
 
 'Look you,' said William, 'you are no common churl; you 
 have fouglit too well for ihat. Let me see your arm.' 
 
 Here ward drew up his sleeve. 
 
 ' Potters do not carry sword-scars like those ; neither are 
 they tattooed like English thanes. Hold up thy head, man, 
 and let us see thy throat.' 
 
 Hereward, who had carefully hung down his head to prevent 
 his throat-patterns being seen, was forced to lift it up. 
 
 ' Aha ! >50 I expected. There is fair ladies' work there. Is 
 not this he who was said to be so like Hereward ? Very good. 
 Put him in ward till I come back from hunting. But do him 
 no harm. For ' — and William fixed on Hereward eyes of the 
 most intense intelligence — ' were he Hereward himself, I should 
 be right glad to see Hereward safe and sound ; my man at last, 
 and earl of all between Humber and the fens.' 
 
 ]')ut Hereward did not rise at the bait. With a face of stupid 
 and ludicrous terror, he made reply in broken French. 
 
 ' Have mercy, mercy, lord king ! Alake not that fiend earl 
 over us. Even Ivo Taillebois there would be better than he. 
 Send him to be earl over the imps in hell, or over the wild 
 Welsli who are worse still : but not over us, good lord king, 
 whom he hath polled and peeled till we are ' 
 
 ' Silence ! ' said William, laughing, as did all round him. 
 ' Thou art a cunning rogue enough, whoever thou art. Go into 
 limbo, and behave thyself till I come back.' 
 
 ' All saints send your grace good sport, and thereby me a 
 good delivei-ance,' quoth Hereward, who knew that his fate 
 might depend on the temper in which William returned. So he 
 was thrust into an outhouse, and there locked up. 
 
 He sat on an empty barrel, meditating on the chances of his 
 submitting to the king after all, when the door opened, and in 
 strode one with a drawn sword in one hand, and a pair of leg- 
 shackles in the other. 
 
 ' Hold out thy shins, fellow ! Thou art not going to sit at 
 thine ease there like an abbot, after killing one of us grooms, 
 and bringing the rest of us into disgrace. Hold out thy legs, I 
 say!' 
 
 ' Nothing easier,' quoth Hereward cheerfully, and held out a 
 leg. But when the man stooped to put on the fetters, he re- 
 ceived a kick which sent him staggering. 
 
 After which he recollected very little, at least in this world. 
 For Hereward cut off his head with his own sword. 
 
 After which (says the chronicler) he broke away out of the 
 house, and over garden walls and palings, hiding and running, 
 till he got to the front gate, and leaped upon mare Swallow.
 
 XXX HOW HEREWARD PLAYED THE TOTTER 269 
 
 And none saw liim, save one unlucky groom-boy, who stood 
 yelling and cursing in front of the mare's head, and went to 
 seize her bridle. 
 
 Whereon, between the imminent danger, and the bad lan- 
 guage, Hereward's blood rose, and he smote that unlucky groom- 
 boy : but whether he slew him or not, the chronicler had rather 
 not say. 
 
 Then he shook up mare Swallow, and with one great shout 
 of 'A Wake! A Wake!' rode for his life, with knights and 
 squires (for the hue and cry was raised) galloping at her heels. 
 
 Wlio then were astonished but those knights, as they saw 
 the ugly potter's garron gaining on them, length after length, 
 till she and her rider had left them far behind ? 
 
 Who then was proud but Hereward, as the mare tucked her 
 great thighs under her, and swept on over heath and rabbit- 
 burrow, over rush and fen, sound ground and rotten all alike 
 to that enormous stride, to that keen briglit eye which foresaw 
 every footfall, to that raking shoulder which picked her up 
 again at every stagger? 
 
 Hereward laid the bridle on her neck, and let her go. Fall 
 she could not, and tire she could not ; and he half wished she 
 might go on for ever. Where could a man be better, than on a 
 good horse, with all the cares of this life blown away out of his 
 brains by the keen air which rushed round his temples 1 And 
 he galloped on, as cheery as a boy, shouting at the rabbits as 
 they scuttled from under his feet, and laughing at the dottrel as 
 they postured and anticked on the mole hills. 
 
 But when he got through Mildenhall, he began to think how 
 lie should get home to Ely. 
 
 The hue and ciy would be out against him. The ports and 
 ferries to the east of the isle as far south as Cambridge would 
 1)6 guarded ; and all the more surely, on account of the ap- 
 ]:)roac]iing attack. True, he knew many a path and ford which 
 tlie French could not know ; but he feared to trust himself in 
 tlie labyrinth of fens and meres, with a mob of pursuers at his 
 heels. A single mistake might pound him among morasses, and 
 force him, even if he escaped himself through the reeds, to leave 
 the mare behind. And to do that was shame and loss intoler- 
 al^le. No. INIare Swallow, for her own sake, must do a deed 
 that day. 
 
 He would go south by the Roman roads. He would go right 
 round the fens ; round Cambridge itself ; into the western 
 forests. There he could lie hid till some friend at Somershara 
 or Earith should ferry him over to tlie western side of the isle. 
 The distance was great ; wcll-nigli fifty miles : but the land 
 was light and sound, and the going safe and good. It must be 
 done. It should be done. 
 
 He gathered the mare together, as he rose tlie slope of Kennet 
 Heath. She was going steadily and soundly, breathing like a
 
 270 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 sleeping child. His pursuers were two miles behind ; black 
 dots among the barrows on Barton hill. He had time to rest 
 her ; and trotted on steadily, keeping to the uplands and the 
 liigli road, from wlience he could see far and wide over the 
 land. 
 
 On by Newmai'ket lieath— nameless and desert then — over 
 smootli chalk turf ; through glades of fern and thorn ; past 
 barrows where slept the heroes of old times, Britain, Boman, 
 fSaxon, Dane ; forefathers of his own, perhaps, among them. 
 Ay — that was the place for a hero to sleep in. Not choked in a 
 minster charnel-house, amid green damp and droning monks : 
 but out under the free sky, with his weapons round him, his 
 horse, his dog, the antlers of his game ; where he might come up 
 out of his baiTOw on moonlight nights, and stare at the flying 
 cloiids, and scent the rushing breeze. All, that he could be 
 buried there : but then Torfrida — he should like to lie by her. 
 
 He was at the Rech-dyke now : and warily he looked east- 
 ward, as he led the mare up the steep bank, for French scouts 
 between him and the fens : but none were within sight. 
 
 He i^aused upon the top of that great earthwork. Dan- 
 gerous as it was to stop in that exposed height, making himself 
 a beacon against the sky, lie could not but look down, and back, 
 at all which remained of free English soil. 
 
 He looked down over Swatfham, Quy, and Waterbeach, and 
 the rest of the tree-embowered hamlets which fringed the fen, 
 green knolls on the shore of a boundless sea of pale-blue mist ; and 
 above that sea, to the far north, a line of darker blue, which was 
 the sacred isle. As the sun sank lower, higher rose the mist ; and 
 the isle grew more and more faint, vaporous, dreamy, as fen-dis- 
 tances are wont to be. Was it not about to fade away in reality ; 
 to become a vapour, and a dream, and leave him alone and free ? 
 Earls, knights, liousecarles, monks, seemed all becoming 
 phantoms, fading with their fading cause. Was it worth while 
 to fight, to die, for them, for anything 1 What was William to 
 him ? What was England 1 Why play out the lost game to the 
 last ? Why not leave all behind, and ride down south — to the 
 sea — the free sea, and the wild joys of the Viking's life? And 
 he led the mare down the Bech-dyke, and up again on to the 
 down, faltering, sto^jping, his head sunken on his breast, his 
 heart sunken within. 
 
 But Torfrida— Torfrida and the little girl. They at least 
 were not phantoms. They could not vanish, could not even 
 die — to him. His they were for ever. What fiend had been 
 putting boy's dreams into his head 1 
 
 And he sprang hastily into the saddle, as one that flees from 
 a temptation. ' Home, mare ! Home to prison again ! We have 
 been out far too long, old lass ! too long.' 
 
 He held on over the Fleam-dyke : but he feared to turn 
 downwards into the Cambridge flats, and kept his vantage-
 
 XXX HOW HEREWARD PLAYED THE POTTER 271 
 
 ground upon the clowns ; till, on the top of the Gogmagog, he 
 struck the old Roman road, which men call ' Wort's Causeway ' 
 at this day. Down that he turned, short to the right, toward 
 the green meadows, and the long line of mighty elms, and the 
 little village which clustered, unconscious of its coming glories, 
 beneath tlie new French keep, beside the Roman bridge. 
 
 The setting sun gilded the white flints of the keep ; and 
 Hereward looked on them with a curse. But it gilded, too, the 
 tree tops of the great forest beyond ; and Hereward uttered 
 something like a j^rayer to St. Etheldreda and her ladies three. 
 For if he could but reach that forest, he was safe. 
 
 The Wake was, of course, too wise to go through Cambridge 
 street, under the eyes of the French garrison. But he saw that 
 the Roman road led straight to a hamlet some mile above the 
 town ; and at the road end, he guessed, there must be either a 
 bridge or a ford. There he could cross the Cam. And he rode 
 slowly downward, longing for it to grow dai'k, and saving tlie 
 mare, in case she should be needed for a sudden rush. 
 
 And a rush was soon needed. For on the hill behind him he 
 saw armour glitter in the red light ; and a brace of knights. 
 They paused for a moment ; and then espied him. One galloped 
 down the road toward him ; the other spurred to the right, 
 straight for Cambridge. 
 
 ' I shall have the whole pack of wolves out, and on me, in half 
 an hour,' thought Hereward ; and struck .spurs into the mare. 
 
 Into the ford — by Chaucer's after-famous mill — he dashed, 
 making more splash than ever did geese in Shelford Fen ; and 
 out again, and on to the clay wold, and away for Coton and 
 Madingley rise, and the black wall of oak, and ash and elm. 
 
 And as he entered the forest at Madingley, he rose in his 
 stirrups, with a shout of ' A Wake ! A Wake ! ' which was heard, 
 for aught he cared, in Cambridge castle : and then rode on 
 leisurely toward the Draytons, and the ferry over the Ouse at 
 Holywell ; for well he knew that they who could not catch The 
 Wake in the field, were still less like to catch him in the wood. 
 
 And so through the forest, by a clear moonlight (says the 
 chronicler), he came in the early morning to the Isle Somersham, 
 which was then all deep wood (as the names of Woodhurst and 
 Somer.sham Parks still testify), and was ferried over at Earith 
 by one of his many friends into the isle of Ely. 
 
 And of all those knights that followed him, none ever saw or 
 heard sign of him, save one : and his horse came to a stand- 
 still in ' the aforesaid wood ' and lie rolled off and lay breathless 
 under a tree, looking up at his honse's lieaving flanks and wagging 
 tail, and wondering how he should get out of that place before 
 the English found him and made an end of liim. 
 
 Then there came up to him a ragged churl, and asked him 
 who lie was, and oflered to helji him. 
 
 'For the sake of God and courtesy,' quoth he, his French
 
 272 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 pride being well-nigh beat out of him, 'if thou hast seen or 
 heard anytliing of Hereward the Wake, good fellow, tell me, 
 and I will repay thee well.' 
 
 ' As thou hast asked me for the sake of God and of courtesy, 
 sir knight, I will tell thee. I am The Wake. And in token 
 thereof, thou shalt give me thy lance and sword, and take 
 instead this sword which I carried oti' from the king's court at 
 Brandon ; and promise me, on the faith of a knight, to bear it 
 back to King William ; and tell him, that Hereward and he 
 have met at last ; and that he had best beware of the day when 
 they shall meet again.' 
 
 So that knight, not having recovered his wind, was fain to 
 submit, and go home a sadder and a wiser man. And King 
 William laughed a royal laugh, and commanded his knights that 
 they should in no wise harm The Wake, but take him alive, and 
 bring him in, and they should have great rewards. 
 
 Which seemed to them more easily said than done. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXr 
 
 HOW THEY FOUGHT AGAIN AT ALDEETH 
 
 Hereward came back in fear and trembling after all. He 
 believed in the magic powers of the witch of Brandon ; and lie 
 asked Torfrida, in his simplicity, whether she was not cunning 
 enough to defeat her spells by counter spells. 
 
 Torfrida smiled and shook her head. 
 
 ' My knight, I have long since given up such vanities. Let us 
 not fight evil with evil, but rather with good. Better are prayers 
 than charms ; for the former are heard in heaven above, and 
 the latter only in the pit below. Let me and all the women of 
 Ely go rather in procession to St. Etheldreda's well, there above 
 the fort at Aldreth, and pray St. Etheldreda to be with us when 
 the day shall come ; and defend her own isle, and the honour of 
 vis women who have taken refuge in her holy arms.' 
 
 So all the women of Ely walked out barefoot to St. Ethel- 
 dreda's well, with Torfrida at their head, clothed in sackcloth, 
 and with fetters on her wrists, and waist, and ankles ; which 
 she vowed, after the strange, sudden, earnest fashion of those 
 times, never to take off again till she saw the French host flee 
 from Aldreth before the face of St. Etheldreda. So they prayed, 
 while Hereward and his men worked at the forts below. And 
 when they came back, and Torfrida was washing her feet, sore 
 and bleeding from her ])ilgrimage, Hereward came in. 
 
 ' You have murdered your poor soft feet, and taken nothing 
 thereby, I fear.' 
 
 'I have. If I had walked on sharp razors all the way, I 
 would have done it gladly, to know what I know now. As I
 
 XXXI HOAV THEY FOUGHT AGAIN AT ALDRETH 273 
 
 prayed I looked out over the fen ; and St. Etheldreda put a 
 thought into my lieart. But it is so terrible a one, that I fear 
 to tell it to you. And yet it seems our only chance. 
 
 Hereward threw himself at her feet, and prayed her to tell. 
 At last she spoke, as one half afraid of her own words : 
 
 ' Will the reeds burn, Hereward ? ' 
 
 Hereward kissed her feet again and again, calling her his 
 prophetess, his saviour. 
 
 ' Burn ! yes, like tinder, in this ]\Iarch wind, if the drought 
 only holds. Pray that the drouglit may hold, Torfrida.' 
 
 'There, there, say no more. How hard-hearted war makes 
 even us women ! There, help me to take off" this rough sack- 
 cloth, and dress myself again.' 
 
 Meanwhile William had moved his army again to Cambridge, 
 and on to Willingham-field, and there he began to throw up 
 those 'globos and montanas,' of which Leofric's paraphraser 
 talks, but of which now no trace remains. Then he began 
 to rebuild his causeway, broader and stronger ; and commanded 
 all the fishermen of tlie Ouse to bring their boats to Cotinglade, 
 and ferry over his materials. ' Among whom came Hereward in 
 a very narrow canoe, with head and beard shaven lest he should 
 be known, and worked diligently among the rest. But the sun 
 did not set that day without mischief ; for before Hereward 
 went off", he finished his work by setting the whole on fire, 
 so that it was all burnt, and some of the French killed and 
 drowned.^ 
 
 And so the Wake went on, with stratagems and ambushes, 
 till 'after seven days' continual fighting, they had hardly done 
 one day's work ; save four globos of wood, in which they 
 intended to put their artillery. But on the eighth day they 
 determined to attack the isle, putting in the midst of them that 
 pythoness woman on a high place, where she might be safe 
 freely to exercise her art.' 
 
 It was not Hereward alone who had enti^eated Torfrida to 
 exerci.se her magic art in their behalf. But she steadily re- 
 fused ; and made good Abbot Thurstan support her refusal by 
 a strict declaration, that he would have no fiends' games jilayed 
 in Ely, as long as he was abbot alive on land. 
 
 Torfrida, meanwhile, grew utterly wild. Her conscience 
 smote her, in spite of her belief that St. Etlieldreda had insjoired 
 her, at the terrible resource which she liad hinted to lier hus- 
 band, and which she knew well he would cai-ry out with 
 terrible success. Pictures of agony and death tloated before 
 her eyes, and kept her awake at night. She watclied long hours 
 in the church in prayer ; she fasted ; she disciplined lier tender 
 body witli sharp pains ; she ti-ied, after the fashion of those 
 times, to atone for her sin, if sin it was. At last she had 
 worked herself up into a religious frenzy. She saw St. Ethel- 
 dreda in the clouds, towering over the isle, menacing the French 
 
 T II. T. w.
 
 274 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 host with her virgin palm-branch. She uttered wild prophe- 
 cies of ruin and defeat to the French; and then, when her 
 frenzy collapsed, moaned secretly of ruin and defeat hereafter 
 to tliemselves. But she would be bold; she would play her 
 part ; she would encourage the heroes who looked to her as one 
 inspired, wiser and loftier than tliemselves. 
 
 And so it befell, that wlien tlie men marched down to 
 Haddenham that afternoon, Torfrida rode at their head on a 
 white charger, robed from throat to ankle in sackcloth, her 
 fetters clanking on her limbs. But she called on the English to 
 see in her the eml)lem of England captive yet unconquered ; 
 and to break her fetters, and the worse fetters of every woman 
 in England who was the toy and slave of the brutal invaders ; 
 and so fierce a triumph sparkled fi-om her wild hawk-eyes that 
 the Englishmen looked up to her weird beauty as to that of an 
 inspn-ed saint ; and when the French came on to the assault 
 there stood on the grassy mound behind the English fort a 
 figure clothed in sackcloth, barefooted and bareheaded, with 
 fetters shining on waist, and wrist, and ankle— her long black 
 locks streaming in the wind, her long white arms stretched 
 cross-wise toward heaven, in imitation of Moses of old above 
 the battle with Amalek ; invoking St. Etheldreda and all the 
 powers of heaven, and chanting doom and defiance to the 
 invaders. 
 
 And the English looked on her, and cried, 'She is a 
 prophetess ! We will surely do some great deed this day, or 
 die around her feet like heroes ! ' 
 
 And opposite to her, upon the French tower, the old hag of 
 Brandon liowled and gibbered with filthy gestures, calling for 
 the thunderstorm which did not come ; for all above the sky 
 was cloudless blue. 
 
 And the English saw and felt, though they could not speak 
 it, dumb nation as they were, the contrast between the spirit of 
 cruelty and darkness, and the spirit of freedom and light. 
 
 So strong was the new bridge, that William trusted himself 
 upon it on horseljack, with Ivo Taillebois at his side. 
 
 William doubted the powers of the witch, and felt rather 
 ashamed of his new helpmate ; but he was confident in his 
 bridge, and in the heavy artillery which he had placed in his 
 four towers. 
 
 Ivo Taillebois was utterly confident in his witch, and in the 
 bridge likewise. 
 
 William waited for the rising of the tide ; and when the tide 
 was near its heiglit, lie commanded the artillery to open, and 
 clear the fort opposite of the English. Then, with crash and 
 twang, the balistas and catapults went oflf, and great stones and 
 heavy lances hurtled through the air. 
 
 ' Back ! ' shouted Toi'f rida, raised almost to madness by fast- 
 ing, self-torture, and religious frenzy. ' Out of yon fort, every
 
 xxxi HOW THEY FOUGHT AGAIN AT ALDRETH 275 
 
 man. Why waste your lives under that artillery 1 Stand still 
 this day, and see how the saints of heaven shall fight for 
 you.' 
 
 So utter was the revei'ence wliich she commanded for tlie 
 moment, that every man drew back, and crowded round her 
 feet outside the fort. 
 
 ' The cowards are iieeing already. Let your men go, sir 
 king ! ' shouted Taillebois. 
 
 ' On to the assault ! Strike for Normandy ! ' shouted 
 William. 
 
 ' I fear much,' said he to himself, ' that this is some stratagem 
 of that Wake's. But conquered they must be.' 
 
 The evening breeze curled up the reach. The great pike 
 splashed out from the weedy shores, sending the whitefish fly- 
 ing in shoals into the low glare of the setting sun : and heeded 
 not, stupid things, the barges packed with mailed men, which 
 swarmed in the reeds on either side the bridge, and began to 
 push out into the river. 
 
 The starlings swung in thousands round the reed-ronds, look- 
 ing to settle in their wonted place : but dare not ; and rose and 
 swung round again, telling each other, in tlieir manifold 
 pipings, how all the reed-ronds teemed with mailed men. And 
 all above, the sky was cloudless blue. 
 
 And then came a trample, a roll of many feet on the soft 
 spongy peat, a low murmur which rose into wild shouts of ' Dex 
 Aie ! ' as a human tide poured along tlie causeway, and past the 
 witch of Brandon Heath. 
 
 ' Dex Aie ? ' quoth William, with a sneer. ' Debbles Aie ! 
 would fit better.' 
 
 ' If, sire, the powers above would have helped us, we should 
 have been happy enough to — But if they will not, it is not our 
 fault if we try below,' said Ivo Taillebois. 
 
 William laughed. ' It is well to liave two strings to one's 
 bow, sir. Forward, men ! forward ! ' shouted he, riding out to 
 the bridge-end, under the tower. 
 
 'Forward !' shouted Ivo Taillebois. 
 
 * Forwai'd ! ' sliouted the hideous hag overhead. ' The spirit 
 of the well figlits for you.' 
 
 ' Fight for yourselves,' said William. 
 
 There were fifty yards of deeji clear water between French- 
 man and Englisliman. Onlj^ fifty yards. Not only the arrows 
 and arblast quari'els, but lieavy hand-javelins flew across every 
 moment ; every now and then a man toppled forward, and 
 jjlungcd into the blue depth among the eels and pike, to find his 
 conu'ades of the sunnner before ; and then the stream was still 
 once more. Tiie coots and waterhens swam in and out of the 
 reeds, and wondered what it was all about. The v.'ater-lilies 
 flapped upon the ripple, as lonely as in the loneliest mere. But 
 their floats were soon broken, their white cups stained with
 
 276 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 human gore. Fifty yards of deei) clear water. And treasure 
 inestimable to win by crossing it. 
 
 They thrust out balks, canoes, pontoons ; they crawled upon 
 them like ants, and thrust out more yet beyond, heedless of 
 theii' comrades, who slipped, and splashed, and sank, liolding 
 out vain hands to hands too busy to seize them. And always 
 the old witch jabbered overhead with her cantrips, pointing, 
 mumming, praying for the storm ; while all above, the sky was 
 cloudless blue. 
 
 And always on the mound opposite, while darts and quarrels 
 whistled round her head, stood Torfrida, pointing with out- 
 stretched scornful finger at the strugglers in the river, and 
 chanting loudly what the Frenchmen could not tell : but it 
 made their hearts, as it was meant to do, melt like wax within 
 them. 
 
 ' They have a counter witch to yours, Ivo, it seems ; and a 
 fairer one. I am afraid the devils, especially if Asmodeus be at 
 hand, are more likely to listen to her than to that old bi'oom- 
 stick-rider aloft.' 
 
 ' Fair is, that fair cause has, sir king.' 
 
 'A good argument for honest men, but none for fiends. 
 What is the fair fiend pointing at so earnestly there ? ' 
 
 ' Somewhat among the reeds. Hark to her now ! She is 
 singing, somewhat more like an angel than a fiend, I will say 
 for her.' 
 
 And Torfrida's song, coming clear and sweet across the 
 water, rose louder and shriller till it almost drowned the 
 jabbering of the witch. 
 
 ' She sees more than we do.' 
 
 ' But I see ! ' cried William, smiting his hand upon his thigh. 
 ' Par le splendeur Dex ! She has been showing them where to 
 fire the reeds ; and they have done it ! ' 
 
 A puflT of smoke ; a wisp of flame ; and then another and 
 another ; and a canoe shot out from the reeds on the French 
 shore, and glided into the reeds of the island. 
 
 ' The reeds are on fire, men ! Have a care,' shouted Ivo. 
 
 ' Silence, fool ! Frighten them once, and they will leap like 
 .sheep into that gulf. Men ! right about ! draw off— slowly and 
 in order. We will attack again to-morrow. 
 
 The cool voice of the great cajitain arose too late. A line of 
 flame was leaping above the reed bed, crackling and howling 
 before the evening breeze. The column on tlie causeway had 
 seen their danger iDut too soon, and fled, but whither ? 
 
 A shower of arrows, quarrels, javelins, fell upon the head of 
 the column as it tried to face about and retreat, confusing it 
 more- and more. One arrow, shot by no common arm, went 
 clean through William's shield, and pinned it to the mailed 
 flesh. He could not stifle a cry of jjain. 
 
 ' You are wounded, sire. Eide for your life ! It is worth
 
 XXXI HOW THEY FOUGHT AGAIN AT ALDRETH 277 
 
 that of a thousand of these churls,' and Ivo seized William's 
 bridle and dragged him, in sj^ite of himself, through the cower- 
 ing, shrieking, struggling crowd. 
 
 On came the flame, leaping and crackling, laughing and 
 shrieking, like a live fiend. The ai'chers and slingers in the 
 boats cowered before it ; and fell, scorched corpses, as it swept 
 on. It reached the causeway, surged up, recoiled from the mass 
 of human beings, then sprang over their heads and passed on- 
 wards, girding them with flame 
 
 The reeds were burning around them ; tlie timbers of the 
 bridge caught fire ; the peat and faggots smouldered beneath 
 their feet. They sprang from the burning footway, and 
 plunged into the fathomless bog, covering their faces and eyes 
 with scorched hands ; and then sank in the black gurgling 
 slime. 
 
 Ivo dragged William on, regardless of curses and prayers 
 from his soldiery ; and tliey reached tlie shore just in time to 
 see between them and the water a long black smouldering 
 writhing line : tlie morass to right and left, which had been a 
 minute before deep reed, an open smutty pool, dotted with 
 boatsful of shrieking and cursing men ; and at the causeway end 
 the tower, with the flame climbing up its posts, and the witch 
 of Brandon throwing herself desperately from the top, and fall- 
 ing dead upon the embers, a motionless heap of rags. 
 
 ' Fool that thou art ! Fool that I was ! ' cried the great king, 
 as he rolled oflT his horse at his tent door, cursing with rage and 
 pain. 
 
 Ivo Taillebois sneaked off ; sent over to Brandon for the 
 second witch ; and hanged her, as some small comfort to his 
 soul. Neither did he forget to search the cabin, till he found 
 buried in a crock the bits of his own gold chain, and various 
 other ti'easures, for which the wretched old women had bartered 
 their souls. All whicli he confiscated to his own use, as a 
 much-injured man. 
 
 The next day William withdrew his army. The men refused 
 to face again that blood-stained pass. The English sj^ells, they 
 said, were stronger than theirs, and than the daring of brave 
 men. Let William take Torfrida and burn her, as she had 
 burned them, with reeds out of Willingham fen : then might 
 they try to storm Ely again. 
 
 Torfrida saw them turn, flee, die in agony. Her work was 
 done ; her passion exliausted ; her self-torture, and the mere 
 weight of her fetters, which she had sustained during her 
 passion, weighed her down ; she dropped senseless on the turf, 
 and lay in a trance for many hours. 
 
 Then slie arose, and, casting ofl'lier fetters and her sackcloth, 
 was herself again : but a sadder woman till her dying day
 
 278 HEREWARD THE WAKE chat. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 HOW KING WILLIAM TOOK COUNSEL OF A CHURCHMAN 
 
 If Torfrida was exhausted, so was Hereward likewise. He 
 knew well that a repulse was not a defeat. He knew well the 
 indomitable persistence, the boundless resources, of the master- 
 mind whom he defied ; and he knew well that another attempt 
 would be made, and then another ; till, though it took seven 
 years in the doing — Ely would be won at last. To hold out 
 doggedly as he could was his plan : to obtain the best terms he 
 could for his comrades. And he might obtain good terms at 
 last. William miglit be glad to pay a fair joi^ice in order to 
 escape such a thorn in his side as the camp of refuge, and might 
 deal — or, at least, promise to deal — mercifully and generously 
 with the last remnant of the English gentry. For himself, yield 
 he would not : when all was over, he would flee to the sea, with 
 Torfrida and his own housecarles, and turn Viking ; or go to 
 Hweyn Ulfsson in Denmark, and die a free man. 
 
 The English did not foresee these things. Their hearts were 
 lifted up with their victory, and they laughed at William and 
 his French, and drank Torfrida's liealth much too often for their 
 own good. Hereward did not care to undeceive them. But he 
 could not help speaking his mind in the abbot's chamber to 
 Thurstan, Egelwin, and his nephews, and to Sigtryg Eanaldsson, 
 who was still in Ely, not only because he had promised to stay 
 there, but because he could not get out if he would. 
 
 Blockaded they were utterly, by land and water. The isle 
 furnished a fair supply of food ; and what was wanting they 
 obtained by foraging. But they had laid the land waste" for so 
 inany miles round, that their plundering raids brought tliem in 
 less than of old ; and if they went far, they fell in with the 
 French, and lost good men, even though they were generally 
 successful. So provisions were running somewhat short, and 
 would run shorter still. 
 
 _ Moreover, there was a great cause of anxiety. Bishop Egel- 
 win, Abbot Thurstan, and the monks of Ely were in rebellion, 
 not only against King William, but moi-e or less against the 
 Pope of Eome. They might be excommunicated. The minster 
 lands might be taken away. 
 
 Bishop Egelwin set his face like a flint. He expected no 
 mercy. All he had ever done for the French was to warn 
 Ilobert Comyn that if he stayed in Durham, evil would befall 
 him. But that was as little worth to him as it was to the said 
 Robert. And no mercy he craved. Tlie less a man had, the 
 more fit he was for heaven. He could but die ; and that he had 
 known ever since he was a chanter-boy. Whether he died in
 
 XXXII HOW KING AVILLIAM TOOK COUNSEL 279 
 
 Ely or in prison mattered little to him, provided they did not 
 refui?e him the sacraments ; and that they would hardly do. 
 But call the Duke of Normandy his rightful sovereign he would 
 not, because he was not — nor anybody else just now, as far as 
 he could see. 
 
 Valiant likewise was Abbot Thurstan, for himself. But he 
 had — unlike Bishop Egelwin, whose diocese had been given to a 
 Fi'enchman — an abbey, monks, and bi'oad lands, whereof he was 
 father and steward. And he must do what was best for the 
 abbey, and also what the monks would let him do. For severe 
 as was the discipline of a minster in time of peace, yet in time 
 of war, when life and death were in question, monks had ere 
 now turned valiant from very fear, like Cato's mouse, and 
 mutinied : and so might the monks of Ely. 
 
 And Edwin and Morcar 1 
 
 No man knows what they said or thought ; perhaps no man 
 cared much, even in their own days. No hint does any chronicler 
 give of what manner of men they were, or what manner of deeds 
 they did. Fail', gentle, noble, beloved even by William, they 
 are mere name.s, and nothing more, in history ; and it is to be 
 supposed, therefore, that they were nothing more in fact. The 
 race of Leofric and Godiva had worn itself out. 
 
 One night the confederates had sat late, talking over the 
 future more earnestly than usual. Edwin, usually sad enough, 
 was e.specially sad that night. 
 
 Hereward jested with him, tried to cheer him : but he was 
 silent, would not drink, and went away before the rest. 
 
 The next morning he was gone, and with him half a dozen of 
 his private housecarles. 
 
 Hereward was terrified. If defections once began, they would 
 be endless. The camp would fall to pieces, and every man 
 among them would be hanged, mutilated, or imprisoned, one by 
 one, helplessly. They must stand or fall together. 
 
 He went raging to Morcar. Morcar knew nought of it. On 
 the faith and honour of a knight, he knew nought. Only his 
 brother had said to him a day or two before that he must see 
 his betrothed before he died. 
 
 'He is gone to William, then? Does he think to win her 
 now — an outcast and a beggar — when he was refused her with 
 broad lands and a thousand men at his back ? Fool ! See that 
 thou play not the fool likewise, nephew, or ' 
 
 ' Or wl)at 1 ' .said Morcar defiantly. 
 
 ' Or thou wilt go, whither. Edwin is gone — to betrayal and 
 ruin.' 
 
 ' Why so 1 He has been kind enough to Waltheof and Gos- 
 patric, why not to Edwin 1 ' 
 
 ' Because,' laughed Hereward, ' he wanted Waltheof, and he 
 does not want you and Edwin. He can keep Mcrcia quiet 
 without your help. Northumbria and the fens he cannot
 
 280 IIEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 witliout AValtheofs. They are a rougher set as you go east and 
 north, as you should know ah-eady ; and must have one of 
 themselves over them to keep them in good humour for a while. 
 When he has used Waltheof as liis stalking-horse long enough 
 to build a castle every ten miles, he will throw him away like a 
 worn bowstring, Earl Morcar, nephew mine.' 
 
 j\Iorcar shook his head. 
 
 In a week more he was gone likewise. He came to William 
 at Brandon. 
 
 ' You are come in at last, young earl ? ' said William sternly. 
 ' You are come too late.' 
 
 ' I throw myself on your knightly faith,' said Morcar. But 
 he had come in an angry and unlucky hour. 
 
 ' How well have you kept your own, twice a rebel, that you 
 should appeal to mine ? Take him away.' 
 
 ' And hang him 1 ' asked Ivo Taillebois. 
 
 ' Pish ! No — thou old butcher. Put him in irons, and send 
 him into Normandy.' 
 
 ' Send him to Roger de Beaumont, sire. Roger's son is safe 
 in Morcar's castle at Warwick, so it is but fair that Morcar 
 should be safe in Roger's.' 
 
 And to Roger de Beaumont he was sent, while young Roger 
 was Lord of Warwick, and all around that once was Leofric 
 and Godiva's. 
 
 Morcar lay in a Norman keep till the day of William's death. 
 On his deathbed the tyrant's heart smote him, and he sent 
 orders to I'elease him. For a few short days, or hours, he 
 breathed free air again. Then Rufus shut him up once more, 
 and for ever. 
 
 And that was the end of Earl ]\Iorcar. 
 
 A few weeks after, three men came to the camp at Brandon, 
 and they brought a head to the king. And when William 
 looked upon it, it was the head of Edwin. 
 
 The human heart must have burst up again in the tyrant as 
 he looked on the fair face of him he had so loved, and so 
 wronged : for they say he wept. 
 
 The knights and earls stood round, amazed and awed, as 
 they saw iron tears run down Pluto's cheek. 
 
 ' How came this here, knaves ? ' thundered he at last. 
 
 They told a ramljling story, how Edwin always would needs 
 go to Winchester to see the queen, for she would stand his 
 friend, and do him right. And how they could not get to 
 Winchester for fear of the French, and wandered in woods and 
 wolds ; and how they were set upon, and hunted ; and how 
 Edwin still was mad to go to Winchester : but when he could 
 not, he would go to Blethwallon and his Welsh ; and how Earl 
 Randal of Chester set upon them; and how they got between 
 a stream and the tide-way of the Dee, and wei'e cut oft'. And 
 how Edwin would not yield. And liow then they slew him in
 
 XXXII HOW KING WILLIAM TOOK COUNSEL 281 
 
 self-defence, and Randal let them bring the head to the 
 king. 
 
 This, or something like it, was their story. But who could 
 believe traitors ? Where Edwin wandered, what he did during 
 those months, no man knows. All that is known is, three men 
 brought his head to William, and told some such tale. And so 
 the old nobility of England died up and down the ruts and 
 shaughs, like wounded birds ; and, as of wounded birds, none 
 knew or cared how far they had run, or how their broken bones 
 had ached before they died. 
 
 ' Out of their own mouths they are condemned, says Holy 
 Writ,' thundered William. ' Hang them on high.' 
 
 And hanged on high they were, on Brandon heath.. 
 
 Then the king turned on his courtiers, glad to ease his own 
 conscience by cursing them. 
 
 ' This is your doing, sirs ! If I liad not listened to your base 
 counsels, Edwin might have been now my faithful liegeman 
 and my son-in-law ; and I had had one more Englishman left 
 in peace, and one sin less upon my soul.' 
 
 'And one thorn less in thy .side,' quoth Ivo Taillebois. 
 
 'Who spoke to tliee? Ralph Guader, thou gavest me the 
 counsel : thou wilt answer it to God and His saints.' 
 
 ' That did I not. It was Earl Roger, because he wanted the 
 man's Shropshire lands.' 
 
 Whereon higli words ensued : and the king gave the earl 
 the lie in his teeth, which tlie earl did not forget. 
 
 ' I think,' said the rough shrewd voice of Ivo, ' tliat 
 instead of crying over spilt milk, — for milk the lad was, and 
 never would have grown to good beef, had he lived to my 
 age ' 
 
 ' Who spoke to thee 1 ' 
 
 'No man, and for that reason I spoke myself. I have lands 
 in Spalding, by your royal grace ; and wish to enjoy them in 
 peace, having worked for them hard enough — and how can I do 
 that, as long as Hereward sits in Ely ? ' 
 
 ' Splendeur Dex ! ' said William, ' thou art right, old 
 butcher.' 
 
 So they laid their heads together to slay Hereward. And 
 after they had talked a while, then spoke William's chaplain for 
 the nonce, an Italian, a friend and pupil of Lanfranc of Pavia, 
 an Italian also, then Archbishop of Canterbury, scourging 
 and imprisoning English monks in the south. And he 
 spoke like an Italian of those times, who knew tlie ways of 
 Rome. 
 
 ' If his majesty will allow my humility to suggest ' 
 
 'What? Thy humility is proud enough under the rose, I 
 will warrant : taut it has a Roman wit under the rose likewise. 
 Speak ! ' 
 
 'That when the secular and carnal arm has failed, as it is
 
 282 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 written ^ — He poureth contempt upon princes, and letteth 
 them wander out of tlie way in the wilderness, or fens ; — for 
 the Latin word, and I doubt not the Hebrew, has both 
 meanings.' 
 
 _ ' Splendeur Dex ! ' cried William bitterly ; ' that hath he done 
 with a vengeance ! Thou art right so far, clerk ! ' 
 
 'Yet helpeth He the poor, videlicet, his church and the 
 religious, who are vowed to holy poverty, out of misery, vide- 
 licet, the oppression of barbarous customs ; and maketh them 
 households like a Hock of sheep.' 
 
 ' They do_ that for themselves already, here in England,' said 
 William, with a sneer at the fancied morals of the English 
 monks and clergy. - 
 
 ' But Heaven and the Church do it for the true poor, whom 
 your majesty is bringing in, to your endless glory.' 
 
 ' But what has all this to do with taking Ely ? ' asked William 
 impatiently. ' I asked thee for reason, and not sermons.' 
 
 'This. That it is in the power of tlie Holy Father— and that 
 power he would doubtless allow you, as his dear son and most 
 faithful servant, to employ for yourself, without sending to 
 Rome, which might cause painful delays— to ' 
 
 It might seem strange that William, Taillebois, Picot, Guader, 
 Warrenne, short-spoken, hard-headed, hard-swearing warriors, 
 could allow complacently a smooth churchman to dawdle on 
 thus, counting his periods on his fingers, and seemingly never 
 coming to the point. 
 
 But they knew well that the churchman was a far cunningei', 
 as well as a more learned, man than themselves. They knew 
 well that they could not hurry him ; and that they need not ; 
 that he would make his point at last, hunting it out step by 
 step, and letting them see how he got thither, like a practised 
 hound. They knew that if he spoke, he had thought long and 
 craftily, till he had made up his mind ; and that therefore he 
 would very probably make up their minds likewise. It was the 
 conquest — not of a lieavenly spirit, though it boasted itself such 
 — but of a cultivated mind over brute llesh. 
 
 They miglit have said all this aloud, and yet the churchman 
 
 ^ I do not laugh at Holy Scripture myself, I only insert this as a 
 specimen of the usual medioeval 'cant' — a name and a practice which 
 are both derived, not from Puritans, but from monks. 
 
 - The alleged profligacy and sensuality of the English Church before 
 the Conquest, rests merely on a few violent and vague expressions of 
 the Norman monks who displaced them. No facts, as far as I can find, 
 have ever been alleged. And without facts on the other side, an im- 
 partial man will hold by the one fact wliich is certain, that the Church of 
 England, popish as it was, was, unfortunately for it, not popish enough ; 
 and, from its insular freedom, obnoxious to the Church of Rome and the 
 ultramontane clergy of Normandy ; and was therefore to be believed 
 capable — and therefore again accused — of any and every crime.
 
 XXXII HOAV KIXG WILLIAM TOOK COUNSEL 283 
 
 would have gone on, as he did, where he left off, with unaltered 
 blandness of tone. 
 
 ' To convert to other uses the goods of the Church. To con- 
 vert them to profane uses would, I need not say, be a sacrilege 
 as horrible to heaven, as impossible to so pious a monarch ' 
 
 Ivo Taillebois winced. He had just stolen a manor from the 
 monks of Crowland, and meant to keep it. 
 
 ' To convert, I say, church lands belonging to abbeys or see.s, 
 whose abbots or bishops are contumaciously disobedient to the 
 Holy See, or to their lawful monarch, he being in the com- 
 munion of the Church and at peace with the said Holy See. If, 
 therefore, to come to that i^oint at which my incapacity, through 
 the devious windings of my simplicity, has been tending, but 
 with halting steps, from the moment that your majesty deigned 
 to liear -' 
 
 ' Put in the spur, man ! ' said Ivo, tired at last, ' and run the 
 deer to soil.' 
 
 ' Huriy no man's cattle, especially thine own,' answered the 
 churchman, with so shrewd a wink, and so cheery a voice, that 
 Ivo, when he recovered from his surprise, cried : 
 
 ' Why, thou art a good huntsman thyself, I believe now.' 
 
 'AH things to all men, if by any means But to return. 
 
 If your majesty should think ht to proclaim to the recalcitrants 
 of Ely, that unless they submit themselves to your royal grace 
 — and to that, of course, of His Holiness our Father — within a 
 certain day, you will convert to other uses — premising, to avoid 
 .scandal, that those uses shall be for the benefit of Holy Church 
 — all lands and manors of theirs lying without the precincts of 
 the isle of Ely — those lands being, as is known, large and of 
 great value — Quid plura ? Why burden your exalted intellect 
 by detailing to you consequences which it has long ere now 
 foreseen 1 ' 
 
 ' . . . ' quoth William, who was nearly as .sharp as the Italian, 
 and had seen it all. ' I will make thee a bishop ! ' 
 
 'Spare to burden my weakness,' said the chaplain ; and slipt 
 away into the shade. 
 
 ' You will take his advice ? ' asked Ivo. 
 
 'Twill' 
 
 ' Then I shall see that Torfrida burn at last.' 
 
 'Burn her?' and William swore. 
 
 'I promised my soldiers to burn the witch with reeds out of 
 Haddenliam fen, as she had burned them ; and 1 must keep my 
 knightly word.' 
 
 William swore yet more. Ivo Taillebois was a butcher and a 
 churl. 
 
 'Call me not cliurl and })utcher too often, lord king, ere thou 
 hast found whetlier thou needest nie or not. Jlough F may be, 
 false was I never.' 
 
 'That thou wert not,' .said William, who needed Taillebois
 
 284 IIEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 mucli, and feared him somewliat ; and remarked something 
 meaning in his voice, which made him cahu liimself, diplomat 
 as he was, instantly. ' But burn Torf rida thou shalt not.' 
 
 ' Well, I care not. I have seen a woman burnt ere now, and 
 had no fancy for the screeching. Besides, they say she is a very 
 fair dame — and lias a fair daughter, too, coming on — and she 
 may very well make a wife for a Frenchman.' 
 
 ' Marry her thyself.' 
 
 ' I shall have to kill this Wake first.' 
 
 ' Then do it, and I will give thee his lands.' 
 
 ' I may have to kill others before The Wake.' 
 
 'You may?' 
 
 And so the matter dropped. But William caught Ivo alone 
 after an hour, and asked him what he meant. 
 
 ' No pay, no play. Lord king, I have served thee well, rough 
 and smooth.' 
 
 'Thou hast, and hast been well paid. But if I have said 
 aught hasty ' 
 
 'Pish, king. I am a plain-spoken man, and like a plain- 
 spoken master. But instead of marrying Torfrida or her 
 daughter, I have more mind to her niece, who is younger, and 
 has no Hereward to be killed first.' 
 
 'Her niece? Who?' 
 
 ' Lucia, as we call her, Edwin and Morcar's sister, Herewarcl's 
 niece, Torfrida's niece.' 
 
 ' No pay, no play, saidst thou ?— so say L What meant you 
 by having to kill others before Hereward ? ' 
 
 ' Beware of Waltheof,' said Ivo. 
 
 'Waltheof ? Pish. This is one of thy inventions for making 
 nie hunt every Englishman to death, that thou mayest gnaw 
 their bones.' 
 
 ' Is it ? Then this I say more. Beware of Ralph Guader.' 
 
 'Pish!' 
 
 'Pish on, lord king.' Etiquette was not yet discovered by 
 Norman barons and earls, who thought themselves all but as 
 good as their king ; gave him their advice when they thought 
 fit ; and if he did not take it, attacked him with all their meinie. 
 ' Pish on, but listen. Beware of Boger.' 
 
 ' And what more ? ' 
 
 ' And give me Lucia. I want her. I will have her.' 
 
 William laughed. ' Thou of all men ? To mix that ditch- 
 water with that wine ? ' 
 
 ' They were mixed in thy blood, lord king ; and thou art the 
 better man for it, so says the world. Old wine and old blood 
 throw any lees to the bottom of the cask ; and we shall have a 
 son worthy to ride behind ' 
 
 ' Take care ! ' quotli William. 
 
 ' Tlie greatest captain upon earth.' 
 
 William laughed again, like Odin's self.
 
 XXXII HOW KING AVILLIAJI TOOK COUNSEL 285 
 
 'Thou shalt have Lucia, for tliat word.' 
 
 'And tliou shalt have the i^lot ere it breaks. As it will.' 
 
 ' To this have I come at last,' said William to himself. ' To 
 murder these English nobles ; to marry their daughters to my 
 grooms. Heaven forgive me ! They have brought it upon 
 themselves, by contumacy to Holy Church. Call my secretary, 
 some one.' 
 
 The Italian re-entered. 
 
 'The valiant and honourable and illustrious knight, Ivo 
 Taillebois, Lord of Holland and Kesteven, weds Lucia, sister of 
 the late Earls Edwin and !Morcar, now with the queen ; and 
 with her, her manors. You will prepare the papers.' 
 
 ' I am yours to death,' said Ivo. 
 
 'To do thee justice, I tliink tliou wert that already. Stay — 
 here — sir priest — do you know any man who knows this 
 Torfridar 
 
 ' I do, king,' said Ivo. ' There is one Sir Ascelin, a man of 
 Gilbert's, in the camp.' 
 
 ' Send for him.' 
 
 ' This Torfrida,' said William, ' haunts me.' 
 
 ' Pray heaven she have not bewitched your grace.' 
 
 'Tut, I am too old a campaigner to take much harm by 
 woman's sharpshooting, at fifteen score yards off, beside a deep 
 stream between. No. The woman has courage — and beauty 
 too, you say 1 ' 
 
 ' What of that, O prince ? ' said the Italian. ' Who more 
 beautiful — if report be true — than those lost women who dance 
 nightly in the forests with Venus and Herodias — as it may be 
 this Torfrida has done many a time 1 ' 
 
 ' You priests are apt to be hard upon poor women.' 
 
 ' The fox found that the grapes were sour,' said the Italian, 
 laughing at himself and his cloth — or at anything else, by which 
 he could curry favour. 
 
 'And this woman was no vulgar witch. That sort of per- 
 sonage suits Taillebois' taste, rather than Hereward's.' 
 
 ' Hungry dogs eat dirty pudding,' said Ivo pertinently. 
 
 ' The woman believed herself in tlie right. She believed that 
 the saints of heaven were on her side. I saw it in her attitude, 
 in her gestures. Perhaps she was right.' 
 
 ' Sire ? ' said both bystanders in astonishment. 
 
 ' I would fain see that woman ; and see her husband too. 
 They are folks after my own heart. I would give them an 
 earldom to win them.' 
 
 ' I liope that in that day you will allow your faithful servant 
 Ivo to retire to his ancestral manors in Anjou ; for England will 
 be too hot for liim. Sire, you know not this man — a liar, a 
 
 Ijully, a rol)ber, a swasli-buckling rulKan, who ' and Ivo ran 
 
 on with furious invective, after the fashion of tlie Normans, who 
 cpnsidcred no name too bad for an Euglisli rebel.
 
 286 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 'Sir Ascelin,' said William, as Ascelin came in, 'you know 
 Here ward V 
 
 Ascelin bowed assent. 
 
 ' Are these tilings true which Ivo alleges ? ' 
 
 ' The Lord Taillebois may know best what manner of man 
 Sir Hereward has become since he himself came into this 
 English air, which changes some folks mightily,' with a hardly 
 disguised sneer at Ivo ; ' but in Flanders he was a very perfect 
 knight, beloved and honoured of all men, and especially of your 
 fatlier-in-law, tlie great marquis.' 
 
 ' He is a friend of yours, then 1 ' 
 
 ' No man less. I owe him more than one grudge, though all 
 in fair quarrel ; and one at least, which can only be wiped out 
 in blood.' 
 
 'Eh?_ Whatr 
 
 Ascelin hesitated. 
 
 ' Tell me, sir ! ' thundered William, ' unless you have aught to 
 be ashamed of.' 
 
 ' It is no shame, as far as I know, to confess that I was once 
 a suitor, as were all knights for miles round, for the hand of the 
 once i^eerless Torfrida. And no shame to confess, that when 
 Hereward knew thereof, he sought me out at a tournament, and 
 served me as he has served many a better man before and since.' 
 
 ' Over thy horse's croup, eh ? ' said William. 
 
 'I am not a bad horseman, as all know, Lord King. But 
 heaven save me, and all I love, from that Hereward. They say 
 he has seven men's strength, and I verily can testify to the truth 
 thereof.' 
 
 ' That may be by enchantment,' interposed the Italian. 
 
 'True, sir priest. This I know, that he wears enchanted 
 armour, which Torfrida gave him before she married him.' 
 
 ' Enchantments again,' said the secretary. 
 
 ' Tell me now about Torfrida,' said William. 
 
 Ascelin told him all about her, not forgetting to say — what, 
 according to the chronicler, was a common report — that she had 
 comi)assed Hereward's love by magic arts. She used to practise 
 sorcery, he said, with her sorcer-ess mistress, Eichildaof Hainault. 
 All men knew it. Arnoul, Richilda's son, was as a brother to 
 her. And after old Baldwin died, and Baldwin of Mons and 
 Richilda came to Bruges, Torfrida was always with her, while 
 Hereward was at the wars. 
 
 'The woman is a manifest and notorious witch,' said the 
 secretary. 
 
 ' It seems so indeed,' said William, with something like a sigh. 
 And so were Torf rida's early follies visited on her ; as all early 
 follies are. 'But Hereward, you say, is a good knight and 
 truer 
 
 ' Doubltess. Even when he committed that great crime at 
 Peterborough '
 
 XXXII HOW KING AVILLIAM TOOK COUNSEL 287 
 
 ' For which he and all his are duly excommunicated by the 
 bishop,' said the secretary. 
 
 ' He did a very courteous and honourable thing.' And Ascelin 
 told how he had saved Alftruda, and instead of putting her to 
 ransom, had sent her safe to Gilbert. 
 
 ' A very kniglitly deed. He sliould be rewarded for it.' 
 
 'Why not burn the witch, and reward him with Alftruda 
 instead, since your majesty is in so gracious a humour?' said 
 Ivo. 
 
 ' Alftruda 1 Who is she ? Ay, I recollect her. Young Dolfin's 
 wife. Why, she has a husband already.' 
 
 ' Ay, but his Holiness at Rome can set that right. What is 
 there that he cannot do ? ' 
 
 ' There are limits, I fear, even to his power. Eh, priest 1 ' 
 
 'What his Holiness' powers as the viceroy of Divinity on 
 earth might be, did he so choose, it were irreverent to inquire. 
 But as he condescends to use that power only for the good of 
 mankind, he condescends, like Divinity, to be bound by the very 
 laws which he has promulgated for the benefit of his subjects ; 
 and to make himself only a life-giving sun, when he might be a 
 destructive thunderbolt.' 
 
 ' He is very kind, and we all owe him thanks,' said Ivo, who 
 had a confused notion that the Pope might strike him dead with 
 lightning, but was good-natured enough not to do so. ' Still, he 
 might think of this plan ; for they say that the lady is an old 
 friend of Hereward's, and not over fond of lier )Scotch husband.' 
 
 'That I know well,' said William. 
 
 'And besides — if aught uiitoward should happen to Dolfin and 
 his kin——' 
 
 'She might, with her broad lands, be a fine bait for Here- 
 ward. I see. Now, do this, by my command. Send a trusty 
 monk into Ely. Let him tell the monks that we have deter- 
 mined to seize all their outlying lands, unless they surrender 
 within the week. And let him tell Hereward, by the faith and 
 oath of William of Normandy, that if he will surrender himself 
 to my grace, he shall have his lands in Bourne, and a free pardon 
 for himself and all liis comrades.' 
 
 The men assented, much against their will, and went out on 
 their errand. 
 
 ' You have played me a scurvy trick, sir,' said Ascelin to Ivo, 
 'in advising the king to give the Lady Alftruda to Hereward.' 
 
 ' What ! Did you want her yourself ? On my lionour I knew 
 not of it. But lia\e patience. You shall have lier yet, and all 
 her lands, if you will hear my counsel, and keep it.' 
 
 ' But you would give her to Hereward ! ' 
 
 'And to you too. It is a poor l^ait, say these frogs of fen-men, 
 that will not take two pike running. Listen to me. I must 
 kill this accursed fox of a Wake. I l)ate him. I cannot eat my 
 meat for thinking of liim. Kill him I must.'
 
 288 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 'And so must I.' 
 
 'Then we are both agreed. Let us work together, and never 
 mind if one's blood be old and the other's new. I am neither 
 fool nor weakly, as thou knowest.' 
 
 Ascelin could not but assent. 
 
 ' Then here. We must send the king's message. But we must 
 add to it.' 
 
 ' That is dangerous.' 
 
 ' So is war ; so is eating, drinking ; so is everything. But we 
 must not let The Wake come in. We must drive him to despair. 
 Make the messenger add but one word — that the king exemjits 
 
 from the amnesty Torfrida, on account of You can put it 
 
 into more scholarly shape than I can.' 
 
 On account of her abominable and notorious sorceries ; and 
 demands that she shall be given up forthwith, to be judged as 
 she deserves.' 
 
 ' Just so. And then for a load of reeds out of Haddenham 
 f en ! ' 
 
 ' Heaven forbid ! ' said Ascelin, who had loved her once. 
 ' Would not perpetual imprisonment suffice ? ' 
 
 ' What care I ? That is the king's aftair, not ours. But I fear 
 we shall not get her. Even so Hereward will flee with her — 
 maybe escape to Flanders or Denmark. He can escape through 
 a rat's hole if he will. However, then we are at i^eace I had 
 sooner kill him and have done with it : but out of the way he 
 must be put.' 
 
 So they sent a monk in with the message ; and commanded 
 him to tell the article about the Lady Torfrida, not only to 
 Hereward, but to the abbot and all the monks. 
 
 A curt and tierce answer came back, not from Hereward, but 
 from Torfrida herself — that William of Normandy was no knight 
 liimself, or he would not offer a knight his life, on condition of 
 burning his lady. 
 
 William swore horribly. ' What is all this about ? ' They 
 told him — as much as they chose to tell him. He was very 
 wroth. ' Who was Ivo Taillebois, to add to his message ? He 
 had said tliat Toi-frida should not burn.' Taillebois was stout ; 
 for he had won the secretary over to his side meanwhile. He 
 had said nothing about burning. He had merely supplied an 
 oversight of the king's. The woman, as the secretary knew, 
 could not, with all deference to his majesty, be included in an 
 amnesty. She was liable to ecclesiastical censure, and the 
 ecclesiastical courts. 
 
 ' Ecclesiastical courts ? What is this new doctrine, church- 
 man ? ' asked William. 
 
 'The superstition of sorcery, my lord king, is neither more 
 nor less than that of heresy itself ; seeing tliat the demons 
 whom it invokes are none otlier than the old Pagan gods : and 
 as heresy — — '
 
 XXXII HOW KING WILLIAM TOOK COUNSEL 289 
 
 William exploded with fearful oaths. He was always jealous 
 (and wisely) for his own prerogatives. And the doctrine was 
 novel, at least in England. Witches were here considered as 
 offenders against the private person enchanted, rather than 
 against the Church ; and executions for witchcraft rai'ely, if 
 ever, took place, unless when the Avitch was supposed to have 
 injured life or property. 
 
 'Have I not given you churchmen enough already, that you 
 must assume my king's power of life and death ? Do I not slay 
 and torment enough, heaven forgive me ! without needing you 
 to help me 1 ' 
 
 The Italian saw that he had gone too far. ' Heaven forbid,' 
 lie said, 'that the Church should stain her hands with the blood 
 of the worst of sinners. All she could do was, having proved 
 guilt, to deliver the offender over to the secular arm, doubtless 
 with merciful entreaties that there might be no shedding of blood. 
 
 'There is none, I presume, when folks are burned alive,' 
 quoth William with a sneer. 'So you are to be the judges, and 
 me your executioner, eh 1 An honourable office, truly. Beware, 
 sir clerk ! Beware ! ' 
 
 ' If the fire of my zeal has for a moment too rashly melted 
 the ice of my modesty ' 
 
 ' Of thy craft, say ' 
 
 ' j\Iy humility humbly entreats forgiveness. I do not press 
 the matter. Only it seemed — it seemed at least to me, that 
 after the slight scandal — forgive my fidelity the word — to the 
 faithful caused by your highness' unhappy employment of the 
 witch of Brandon ' 
 
 William cursed under his breath. 
 
 'Your highness might nobly atone therefor, by executing 
 justice on a far more flagitious offender, who has openly com- 
 passed and effected the death of hundreds of your highness' 
 otherwi.se invincible warriors ' 
 
 'And throw good money after bad,' said William, laughing. 
 ' I tell thee, priest, she is too pretty to burn, were she the Witch 
 of Endor herself.' 
 
 ' Be it so. Your royal clemency can always remit her sen- 
 tence, even so far as to pardon her entirely, if your merciful 
 temper should so incline you. But meanwhile, what better 
 could we have done, than to remind the monks of Ely that she 
 was a sorceress ; that she had committed grave crimes, and was 
 liable to punishment lierself, and they to punishment also, as 
 her shelterers and accomplices?' 
 
 ' Wiiat your highness wanted,' quoth Taillebois, ' was to bring 
 over the monks ; and I believe that message had been a good 
 stroke toward that. As for Hereward, you need not think of 
 him. He never will come in alive. He has sworn an oath, and 
 lie will keep it.' 
 
 And so the matter ended. 
 
 U n. T. w.
 
 290 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 HOW THE MONKS OF ELY DID AFTER THEIR KIND 
 
 William's bolt, or rather inextinguisliable Greek fire, could not 
 have fallen into Ely at a more propitious moment. 
 
 Hereward was away, with a large body of men and many 
 ships, foraging in the north-eastern fens. He might not be 
 back for a Aveek. 
 
 Abbot Thurstan — for what cause is not said — had lost heart 
 a little while before, and fled to 'Angerhale, taking with him 
 the ornaments and treasure of the church.' 
 
 Hereward had discovered his flight with deadly fear : but 
 provisions he must have, and forth he must go, leaving Ely in 
 charge of half a dozen independent English gentlemen, each of 
 whom would needs have his own way, just because it was his 
 own. 
 
 Only Torfrida he took, and j^ut her hand into the hand of 
 Bigtryg Ranaldsson, and said, ' Thou true comrade and perfect 
 knight, as I did by thy wife, do thou by mine, if aught befall.' 
 
 And 8igtryg swore first by the white Christ, and then by the 
 head of SleijDnir, Odin's horse, that he would stand by Torfrida 
 till the last ; and then, if need was, slay her. 
 
 'You will not need. King Sigtryg. I can slay myself,' said 
 she, as she took the Ost-Dane's hard honest hand. 
 
 And Hereward went, seemingly by Mepal or Sutton. Then 
 came the message ; and all men in Ely knew it. 
 
 Torfrida stormed down to the monks, in honest indignation, 
 to demand that they should send to William, and purge her of 
 the calumny. She found the chapter-door barred and bolted. 
 They were all gabbling inside, like starlings on a foggy morning, 
 and would not let her in. She hurried back to Sigtryg, fearing 
 treason, and foreseeing the effect of the message upon the 
 monks. 
 
 But what could Sigtryg do ? To find out their counsels was 
 impossible for him, or any man in Ely. For the monks could 
 talk Latin, and the men could not. Torfrida alone knew the 
 sacred tongue. 
 
 If Torfrida could but listen at the keyhole. Well — all was 
 fair in war. And to the chapter-house door she went, guarded 
 by Sigtryg and some of his housecarles ; and listened, with a 
 beating heart. She heard words now incomprehensible. That 
 men who most of them lived no better than their own serfs ; 
 who could have no amount of wealth, not even the hope of leav- 
 ing that wealth to their children — that such men should cling 
 to wealth ; struggle, forge, lie, do anything for wealth, to be 
 used almost entirely not for themselves, but for the honour and
 
 XXXIII HOW THE MONKS DID AFTER THEIR KIND 291 
 
 glory of the convent — indicates an intensity of corporate feeling 
 unknown in tlie outer world then or now. 
 
 The monastery would be ruined. Without this manor, 
 without that wood, without that stone quarry, that fishery — 
 what would become of them ? 
 
 But mingled with those words were other words, unfor- 
 tunately more intelligible to this day — those of superstition. 
 
 What would St. Etheldreda say? What St. Sexburga, St. 
 Witliburga, St. Ermenilda ? How dare they provoke their 
 wrath ? Would they submit to lose their lands 1 They might 
 do — what might they not do ? Their bones would refuse ever 
 to work a miracle again. They had been but too slack in 
 miracle-working for many years. They might strike the isle 
 with barrenness, the minster with lightning. They might send 
 a flood up the fens. They might 
 
 William the Norman, to do them justice, those valiant monks 
 feared not ; for he was man, and could but kill the body. But 
 St. Etheldreda, a virgin goddess, with her three maidens, and 
 indeed, all the host of heaven to back her — might she not, by 
 intercession with powers still higher than her own, destroy both 
 body and soul in hell ? 
 
 'We are betrayed. They are going to send for the abbot 
 from Angerhale,' said Torfrida at last, reeling from the door. 
 'All is lost.' 
 
 ' Shall we burst open the door and kill them all ? ' asked 
 Sigtryg simply. 
 
 ' No, king — no. They ai-e God's men •, and we have blood 
 enough upon our souls.' 
 
 ' We can keep the gates, lest any go out to the king.' 
 
 ' Impossible. They know the isle better than we, and have a 
 tliousand arts.' 
 
 So all they could do was to wait in fear and trembling for 
 Hereward's return, and send Martin Lightfoot off to warn him, 
 wherever he might be. 
 
 The monks remained perfectly quiet. The organ droned, the 
 chants wailed as usual ; nothing interrupted the stated order of 
 the services ; and in the hall, each day, they met the knights as 
 cheerfully as ever. Greed and superstition had made cowards 
 of them— and now traitors. 
 
 It was whispered that Abbot Thurstan had returned to tlie 
 minster : but no man saw him : and so three or four days 
 went on. 
 
 Martin found Hereward after incredible labours, and told 
 liim all, clearly and shrewdly. Tlie man's manifest insanity 
 only seemed to quicken his wit, and increase his powers of 
 bodily endurance. 
 
 Hereward was already on his way home ; and never did lie 
 and his good men row harder than they rowed that day back to 
 Sutton. He landed, and hurried on with half his men, leaving
 
 292 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 the rest to disembark the booty. He was anxious as to the 
 temper of the monks. He foresaw all that Torfrida had fore- 
 seen. And as for Torfrida herself, he was half mad. Ivo Tail- 
 lebois' addition to William's message had had its due eftect. He 
 vowed even deadlier hate against the Frenchman than he had 
 ever felt before. He ascended the heights to Sutton. It was 
 his shortest way to Ely. He could not see Aldretli from thence : 
 but he could see Willingham field and Belsar's hills, round the 
 corner of Haddenham Hill. 
 
 The sun was setting long before they reached Ely : but just 
 as he sank into the western fen, Winter stopped, pointing. — Was 
 that the flash of arms? There, far away, just below Willing- 
 ham town. Or was it the setting sun upon the ripple of some 
 long water ? 
 
 ' There is not wind enough for such a ripple,' said one. But 
 ere they could satisfy themselves, the sun was clown, and all the 
 fen was gray. 
 
 Hereward was still more uneasy. If that had been the flash 
 of arms, it must have come oft' a very large body of men, moving 
 in column, on the road between Cambridge and Ely. He 
 hastened on his men. But ere they were within sight of the 
 minster-tower, they were aware of a horse galloping violently 
 towards them through the dusk. Hereward called a halt. He 
 heard his own heart beat as he stopped. The hoi'se was pulled 
 up short among them. On its back was a lad, with a smaller 
 boy behind him, clasping his waist. 
 
 ' Hereward ? Thank God, I am in time ! And the child is 
 safe too. Thanks, thanks, dear saints ! ' a voice sobbed 
 out. 
 
 It was the voice of Torfrida. 
 
 ' Treason ! ' she gasped. 
 
 ' I knew it.' 
 
 ' The French are in the island. They have got Aldreth. The 
 whole army is marching from Cambridge. The whole fleet is 
 coming up from Southrey. And you have time ' 
 
 ' To burn Ely over the monks' heads. Men ! Get bogwood 
 out of yon cottage, make yourselves torches, and onward ! ' 
 
 Then rose a babel of questions, which Torfrida answered as 
 she could. But she had nothing to tell. ' Clerks' cunning,' she 
 said bitterly, 'was an overmatch for woman's wit.' She had 
 sent out a spy : but he had not returned till an hour since. 
 Then he came back breathless, with the news that the French 
 army was on the march from Cambridge, and that, as he came 
 over the water at Aldreth, he found a party of French knights 
 in the fort on the Ely side, talking peaceably with the monks 
 on guard. 
 
 She had run up to the borough liill — which men call Cherry 
 Hill at this day — and one look to the north-east had shown her 
 the river swarming with ships. She had rushed home, put boys'
 
 XXXIII HOW THE MONKS DID AFTER THEIR KIND 293 
 
 clothes on herself and her child, liid a few jewels in her bosom, 
 saddled Swallow, and ridden for life thither. 
 
 'And King Sigtryg?' 
 
 He and his men had gone desperately out towai'ds Hadden- 
 ham, with what English they could muster : but all were in 
 confusion. Some were getting the women and children into 
 boats, to hide them in the reeds ; others battering the miifster 
 gates, vowing vengeance on the monks. 
 
 'Then Sigtryg will be cut oft'! Alas for the day that ever 
 brought his brave heart hither ! ' 
 
 And wlien the men heard that, a yell of fury and despair 
 burst from all throats. 
 
 Should they go back to their boats ? 
 
 'No! onward,' cried Hereward. 'Revenge first, and safety 
 after. Let us leave nothing for the accursed Frenchmen but 
 smoking ruins, and then gather our comrades, and cut our way 
 back to the north.' 
 
 'Good counsel,' cried Winter. 'We know the roads, and they 
 do not ; and in such a dark night as is coming, we can march 
 out of the island without their being able to follow us a 
 mile.' 
 
 They hurried on : but stopped once more, at the gallojoing of 
 another horse. 
 
 'Who conies, friend or foe? ' 
 
 ' Alwyn, son of Orgar ! ' cried a voice under breath. ' Don't 
 make such a noise, men ! The French are within half a mile of 
 you.' 
 
 ' Then one traitor monk shall die ere I retreat,' cried Here- 
 ward, seizing him by the throat. 
 
 ' For heaven's sake, hold ! ' cried Torfrida, seizing his arm. 
 ' You know not what he may have to say.' 
 
 ' I am no traitor, Hereward ; I have fought by your side as 
 well as the best ; and if any but you had called Alwyn ' 
 
 'A curse on your boasting. Tell us the truth.' 
 
 ' The abbot has made peace with the king. He would give up 
 the island, and St. Etheldreda should keep all her lands and 
 honours. I said wliat I could : but wlio was I to resist the whole 
 chapter ? Could I alone Ijrave St. Etheldreda's wrath ? ' 
 
 ' Alwyn, the valiant, afraid of a dead girl ! ' 
 
 ' Blaspheme not, Hereward ! She may hear you at this 
 moment ! Look there ! ' and pointing up, the monk cowered in 
 terror, as a meteor flaslied through the sky. 
 
 ' That is St. Etheldreda shooting at us, oh 1 Then all I can say 
 is, she is a very bad marksman. And the French are in the 
 island?' 
 
 ' Tliey are.' 
 
 ' Then forward, men, for one lialf-hour's i:)leasure ; and then 
 to die like Englishmen.' 
 
 'On?' cried Alwyn. 'You cannot go on. The king is at
 
 294 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 Wliichford at this moment with all his army, half a mile off! 
 Right across the road to Ely ! ' 
 
 Hereward grew Berserk. ' On ! men ! ' shouted he, ' we shall 
 kill a few Frenchmen apiece before we die ! ' 
 
 ' Hereward,' cried Torf rida, ' you shall not go on ! If you go, 
 I shall be taken. And if I am taken, I shall be burned. And I 
 cannot burn — I cannot ! I shall go mad with terror before I 
 come to the stake. I cannot go stript to my smock before those 
 Frenchmen. I cannot be roasted piecemeal ! Hereward, take 
 me away ! Take me away ! or kill me, now and here ! ' 
 
 He paused. He had never seen Torfrida thus overcome. 
 
 ' Let us flee ! The stars are against us. God is against us ! 
 Let us hide — escape abroad : beg our bread, go on pilgrimage to 
 Jerusalem together — for together it must be always : but take 
 me away ! ' 
 
 ' We will go back to the boats, men,' said Hereward. 
 
 But they did not go. They stood there, irresolute, looking 
 towards Ely. 
 
 The sky was pitchy dark. The minster-roofs, lying north- 
 east, were utterly invisible against the blackness. 
 
 ' We may at least save some who escape out,' said Hereward. 
 ' March on quickly to the left, under the hill to the plough-field.' 
 
 They did so. 
 
 'Lie down, men. There are the French, close on our right. 
 Down among the bushes.' 
 
 And they heard the heavy tramp of men within a quarter of 
 a mile. 
 
 ' Cover the mare's eyes, and hold her mouth lest she neigh,' 
 said Winter. 
 
 Hereward and Torfrida lay side by side upon the heath. She 
 was shivering with cold and horror. He laid his cloak over 
 her ; put his arm round her. 
 
 'Your stars did not foretell you this, Torfrida.' He spoke 
 not bitterly, but in utter sadness. 
 
 She burst into an agony of weeping. 
 
 'My stars at least foretold me nothing but woe, since first I 
 saw your face.' 
 
 ' Why did you marry me then 1 ' asked he, half angrily. 
 
 ' Because I loved you. Because I love you still.' 
 
 ' Then you do not regret ? ' 
 
 ' Never, never, never ! I am quite happy — quite happy. 
 Why not?' 
 
 A low murmur from the men made them look up. They 
 were near enough to the town to hear — only too much. They 
 heard the tramp of men, shouts and yells. Then the shrill cries 
 of women. All dull and muffled the sounds came to them 
 through the still night ; and they lay there spell-bound, as in a 
 nightmare, as men assisting at some horrible tragedy, which 
 they had no power to prevent. Then there was a glare, and a
 
 xxxiii HOW THE MONKS DID AFTER THEIR KIND 295 
 
 wisp of smoke against the black sky, and then a house began 
 burning brightly, and then another. 
 
 ' This is the Frenchman's faith ! ' 
 
 And all the while, as the sack raged in the town below, the 
 minster stood above, glaring in the firelight, silent and safe. 
 The church had provided for herself by sacrificing the children 
 beneath her fostering shadow. 
 
 They waited nearly an hour, but no fugitives came out. 
 
 ' Come, men,' said Hereward wearily, ' we may as well to the 
 boats.' 
 
 And so they went, walking on like men in a dream, as yet 
 too stunned to realise to themselves the hopeless horror of their 
 situation. Only Hereward and Torfrida saw it all, looking back 
 on tlie splendid past — the splendid hopes for the future : glory, 
 honour, an earldom, a free Danish England — and this was all 
 that was left ! 
 
 ' No, it is not ! ' cried Torfrida suddenly, as if answering her 
 own unspoken thoughts, and his. 'Love is still left. The gal- 
 lows and the stake cannot take that away.' And she clung 
 closer to her husband's side, and he again to hers. 
 
 They reached the shore, and told their tale to their comrades. 
 'Whither now?' 
 
 'To Well. To the wide mere,'^ said Hereward. 
 
 ' But their ships will hunt us out there.' 
 
 ' We shall need no hunting. We must pick up the men at 
 Cissham. You would not leave them to be murdered, too, as we 
 have left the Ely men 1 ' 
 
 No. They would go to Well. And then ? 
 
 ' The Bruneswold, and the merry greenwood,' said Hereward. 
 
 ' Hey for the merry greenwood ! ' shouted Leof ric the deacon. 
 And the men, in the sudden delight of finding any place, any 
 purpose, answered with a lusty cheer. 
 
 'Brave hearts!' said Hereward. 'We will live and die 
 together like Englishmen.' 
 
 ' We will, we will. Viking.' 
 
 ' Where shall we stow the mare,' asked Gery, ' the boats are 
 full already.' 
 
 ' Leave her to me. On board, Torfrida.' 
 
 He got on board last, leading the mare by the bridle. 
 
 'Swim, good lass !' said he, as they pushed off; and the good 
 lass, wlio had done it many a time before, waded in, and was 
 soon swimming behind. Hereward turned, and bent over the 
 
 ^ Probably rear Upwcll and Outwell, in the direction of Wisbeach. 
 There the okl Nene and the ohl Wehiey Rivers joining, fomied vast mor- 
 asses, now laid dry by the Middle Level and JMarsliland Drains. The 
 bursting of the Middle Level Sluice in the year 1861 restored for a while a 
 vast tract in these fens to its primeval state of ' the Wide Mere.' From 
 tliis point Hereward could escape north into Lincolnshire, either by Wis- 
 beach and the Wash, or by Crowlaud and Bourne.
 
 296 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 side in tlie darkness. There was a strange gurgle, a splash, and 
 a swirl. He turned round, and sat upright again. They rowed 
 on. 
 
 ' That mare will never swim all the way to Well,' said one. 
 
 ' She will not need it,' said Hereward. 
 
 'Why?' said Torfrida, feeling in the dai'kness, 'she is loose. 
 What is this in your hand ? Your dagger ? and wet ? ' 
 
 ' Mare Swallow is at the bottom of the reach. We could 
 never liave got her to Well.' 
 
 ' And you have ' cried a dozen voices. 
 
 'Do you think that I would let a cui^sed Frenchman — ay, 
 even Williain's self — say that he had bestridden Hereward's 
 mare ? ' 
 
 None answered : but Torfrida, as she laid her head upon her 
 husband's bosom, felt the great tears running down from his 
 cheek on to her own. 
 
 None spoke a word. The men were awe-stricken. There was 
 something despairing and ill-omened in the deed. And yet there 
 was a savage grandeur in it, which bound their savage hearts 
 still closer to their chief. 
 
 And so mare Swallow's bones lie somewhere in the peat unto 
 this day. 
 
 They got to Well ; they sent out spies to find the men who 
 liad been ' wasting Cissham with fire and sword : ' and at last 
 brought them in. Ill news, as usual, had travelled fast. They 
 had heard of the fall of Ely, and hidden themselves 'in a certain 
 very small island which is called Stimtench,' where, thinking 
 that the friends in search of them were Frenchmen in pursuit, 
 they hid themselves amongst the high reeds. There two of them 
 — one Starkwulf by name, the other Broher — hiding near each 
 other, ' thouglit that, as they were monks, it might conduce to 
 their safety if they had shaven crowns ; and set to work with 
 their swords to shave each other's heads as well as they could. 
 But at last, by their war-cries and their speech, recognising 
 each other, they left off fighting,' and went after Hereward. 
 
 So jokes, grimly enough, the old chronicler, who may have 
 seen them come in the next morning with bleeding coxcombs, 
 and could laugh over the tiling in after years. But he was in 
 no humour for jesting in the days in wliich they lay at Well. 
 Nor- was he in jesting humour when, a week afterwards, hunted 
 by the French from Well, and forced to take to meres and 
 waterways known only to them, and too shallow and narrow 
 for the French ships, they found their way across into tlie old 
 Nen, and so on toward Crowland, leaving Peterborough far on 
 the left. For as tliey neared Crowland, they saw before them, 
 rowing slowly, a Ijarge full of men. And as they neared that 
 barge, beliold, all they wlio rowed were blind of both their eyes ; 
 and all they who sat and guided them, were maimed of both 
 their hands. And as they came alongside, there was not a man
 
 XXXIII HOW THE MONKS DID AFTER THEIR KIND 297 
 
 in all that ghastly crew but was an ancient friend, by whose 
 side they had fought full many a day, and with whom they had 
 drunk deep full many a night. They were the firstfruits of 
 William's vengeance ; thrust into that boat, to tell the rest of 
 the fen-men what those had to expect who dared oppose the 
 Norman. And they were going to Crowland, to the sanctuary 
 of the Danish fen-men, that they might cast themselves down 
 before St. Guthlac, and ask of him that mercy for their souls 
 which the Conqueror had denied to their bodies. Alas for 
 them ! They were but a handful among hundreds, perhaps 
 thousands, of mutilated cripi^les, who swarmed all over England, 
 and especially in the north and east, throughout the reign of 
 the Norman conquerors. They told their comrades' fate, 
 slaughtered in the first attack, or hanged afterwards as rebels 
 and traitors to a foreigner whom they had never seen, and to 
 whom they owed no fealty by law of God and man. 
 
 ' And Sigtryg Ranaldsson ? ' 
 
 None knew aught of him. He never got home again to his 
 Irish princess. 
 
 ' And the poor women ? ' asked Torf rida. 
 
 But she received no answer. 
 
 And the men swore a great oath, and kept it : never to give 
 quarter to a Frenchman, as long as there was one left on 
 English ground. 
 
 Neither were the monks of Ely in jesting humour, when they 
 came to count up the price of their own baseness. They had 
 obeyed the apostolic injunction, 'to submit to the powers that 
 be because they are ordained,' etc. But they found their return 
 (as the Book of Ely calls it) to ' a more wholesome counsel,' 
 beset with thorns. The king barred them out of the monastery, 
 lest the monks should come out with crosses and relics to im- 
 plore his mercy. Going into the minster, he stood afar off from 
 the holy body of St. Etheldreda, and cast a mark of gold on the 
 altar, as a peace-offering to that terrible lady ; and then retired 
 to Whicliford, leaving his soldiers to work their wicked will. So 
 terrified were tlie poor monks, that no mass was celebrated that 
 day : but as the hours wore on, they needs must eat. And as 
 they ate, there entered to them into the refectory Gilbert of 
 Clare — 
 
 ' Ye English swine, could ye find no other time to feed 1 The 
 king is in the minster.' 
 
 Out hurried the monks, but too late. The king was gone, 
 and hardly, by humbling themselves to their old enemy Gilbert, 
 did they obtain grace of the king for seven hundred marks of 
 silver. The which money they took, as they had promised, to 
 Picot the Viscount of Cambridge. He weighed it ; and finding- 
 it an ounce short, accused them of cheating the king, and 
 sentenced them to pay 300 marks more. Then was lost all the 
 gold and silver which was left in Ely : the image of St. j\Iary
 
 298 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 with her child, sitting on a throne, wrought with wondrous 
 skill, which Elfsy the abbot had made of gold and silver, was 
 broken up ; and the images of the guardian virgins stripped of 
 their precious ornaments. After which the royal commissioners 
 came, plundered the abbey of all that was left of those treasures, 
 which had been brought from every quarter into the camp of 
 refuge, of which a curious inventory remains to this day. 
 
 Thurston, the traitor abbot, died in a few months. Egelwin, 
 the Bishop of Durham, was taken in the abbey. He was a 
 bishop, and they dared not kill him. But he was a patriot, and 
 must have no mercy. They accused him of stealing the treasures 
 of Durham, which he had brought to Ely, for the service of his 
 country ; and shut him up in Abingdon. A few months after, the 
 brave man was found starved and dead, ' whether of his own 
 will, or enforced ; ' and so ended another patriot prelate. But 
 we do not read that the Normans gave back the treasures to 
 Durham. And so, yielding an immense mass of booty, and 
 many a fair woman, as the Norman's prey, ended the camp of " 
 refuge, and the glory of the isle of Ely. 
 
 But not the wrath of St. Etheldreda. Whatever she might 
 have done when on earth, she was not inclined, as patroness of 
 Ely, to obey the apostolic injunction, and 'take joyfully the 
 spoiling of her goods ' ; and she fell upon those who had robbed 
 her of her gay garments and rich manors, and left her to go in 
 russet for many a year, with such strokes as proved that the 
 monks had chosen the less of two evils, when they j^referred 
 falling into the hands of an angry king to falling into those of 
 an angry saint. Terrible was the fate of Eoger Picot's man 
 Gervase, who dared to harry and bind St. Etheldreda's men ; who 
 even brought an action at law against the abbot himself. The 
 very night before the trial, St. Etheldreda, and her two sisters 
 St. Withburga and Sexburga, stabbed him to the heart with the 
 spikes of their pastoral staves, and he died, to the terror of all 
 bystanders. 
 
 Worse, even, was the fate of Roger Picot himself, ' the hungry 
 lion, the prowling wolf, the crafty fox, the filthy swine, the 
 shameless dog,' who had said, ' Who is this Etheldreda, whose 
 lands ye say that I have taken ? I know not Etheldreda, and I 
 will not give up her lands.' 
 
 ' Listen, ye isles, and attend, ye people from afar oft", what her 
 .spouse hath done for the Lady of Ely. His sin, saith Scripture, 
 is sought, and shall not be found. By whom is it sought ? By 
 Him from whom nothing is hidden. By whom shall it be 
 found ? By no man, since none know His day. Whither he is 
 gone, why he fled, or how he has died ; whether he has descended 
 alive into the pit with Dathan and Abyrom, or become a beast 
 with Naljuchadonossor ; hath vanished utterly, or by any other 
 mode hath perished, to be damned without end. But one thing 
 we know for certain, that in our bounds he has appeared no
 
 XXXIV HOW HEREWARD WENT TO THE GREENAVOOD 299 
 
 more, but has disappeared for ever to-day. Glory to Him who 
 has given us the victory over our enemy.' 
 
 Worse again (accoi'ding to those of Ely) was the fate of Earl 
 William de Warrenne, who violently withheld some farms from 
 St. Etheldreda. For on the night on which he died, the then 
 abbot heard his soul carried off by demons, crying in vain to 
 heaven for mercy. Therefore when his lady, Gundreda (William 
 the Conqueror's stepdaughter), a few days after, sent a hundred 
 shillings for his soul to the minster at Ely, the abbot and his 
 monks sent them back, neither deigning nor daring to take the 
 money of a damned man. So there is no hope for Earl 
 Warrenne, were it not that the Cluniac monks, whom he had 
 established at Lewes, holding naturally a different oi^inion of 
 him and his deeds, buried him there in splendour, and put up 
 over his tomb a white marble slab, on which were set forth his 
 virtues, and the present protection and future rewards which 
 St. Pancras was to procure for him in return for the minster 
 which he had raised in honour of that mighty avenger of 
 perjury.i 
 
 After which — whether St. Pancras did or did not deliver Earl 
 William from the wrath of St. Etheldreda — the Lady of Ely was 
 appeased ; and when almost all the monks were either sick or 
 dying (possibly from one of those fevers which so often devastated 
 tlie fens), she was seen, after long fastings and vigils, by a holy 
 man named Goderic, staying the hand of some mighty being, 
 who was in act to shoot an arrow from heaven against the 
 doomed borough. After which, watching and praying still 
 more fervently, he beheld St. Etheldreda and her maidens rise 
 from their tombs by night, and walk majestic through choir and 
 cloister, and so to the sick-house and the dying monks. And 
 there the Lady of Ely went round to every bed, and laid her pure 
 liand upon the throbbing forehead and wiped the typhus-gore 
 from the faded lij^s with her sacred sleeve, and gave the sufferers 
 sudden health and strength ; and signified to Goderic, who had 
 followed her trembling afar off, that all was forgiven and 
 forgotten.^ 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 HOW HEREWARD WENT TO THE GREENWOOD 
 
 And now is Hereward to the greenwood gone, to be a bold out- 
 law ; and not only an outlaw liimself, but the father of all out- 
 laws, who held tliose forests for two hundred years, from the 
 fens to the Scottish border. Utlages, forestiers, latrunculi, 
 
 ^ Ordericus Vitalis, book viii. c. 9. 
 
 2 For all these tales (the last is told with much pathos), sec the Liber 
 Eliensis, book ii, §§ 119-133.
 
 300 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 sicarii, sauvages, who prided themselves upon sleeping on the 
 bare ground — they were accursed by the conquerors, and beloved 
 by the conquered. The Norman viscount or sheriff commanded 
 to hunt them from hundred to hundred with hue and cry, horse 
 and bloodhound. The English yeomen left for them a keg of 
 ale, or a basket of loaves, beneath the hollins green, as sauce 
 for their meal of ' nombles of the dere.' 
 
 ' For hart and hind, and doe and roe, 
 Were in that forest great plentie,' 
 and 
 
 ' Swannes and fosauntes they had full good, ■ 
 
 And foules of the rivere. 
 There fayled never so lytell a byrde, 
 That ever was bred on brere.' 
 
 With the same friendly yeoman 'that was a good felawe,' 
 they would lodge by twos and threes during the sharp frosts of 
 mid- winter, in the lonely farmhouse which stood in the ' field ' 
 or forest-clearing : but for the greater part of the year their 
 ' lodging was on the cold ground ' in the holly thickets, or under 
 the hanging rock, or in a lodge of boughs. 
 
 And then, after a while, the life which began in terror, and 
 despair, and poverty, and loss of land and kin, became not only 
 tolerable, but pleasant. Bold men and hardy, they cared less 
 and less for 
 
 ' The thornie wayes, the deep valleys, 
 
 The snowe, the frost, the rayne, 
 
 The colde, the beta ; for dry or wete 
 
 We must lodge on the plaine. 
 
 And us above, none other roofe 
 
 But a brake bushe, or twayne.' 
 
 And they found fair lassies, too, in time, who like Torfrida 
 and Maid ^Marian, would answer with the nut-brown maid, to 
 their warnings against the outlaw life, that — 
 
 ' Amonge the wild dere, such an archere 
 As men say that ye be, 
 He may not fayle of good vitayle, 
 Where is so great plente : 
 And water clere of the riveie, 
 
 Shall be full swete to me, 
 With which in hele, I shall right wele. 
 Endure, as ye may see.' 
 
 Then called they themselves ' merry men ' ; and the forest 
 the 'merry greenwood ' ; and sang, with Ilobin Hood, 
 
 'A merrier man than I, belyve 
 There lives not in Christentie.' 
 
 They were coaxed back, at times, to civilised life ; they got 
 tlieir grace of the king, and entered the king's service ; but
 
 XXXIV HOW HEREWARD WENT TO THE GREENAVOOD 301 
 
 the craving after the greenwood was upon them. They dreaded 
 and hated the four stone walls of a Norman castle ; and, like 
 Robin Hood, slipt back to the forest and the deer. 
 
 Gradually, too, law and order arose among them, lawless as 
 they were ; that instinct of discipline and self-government, side 
 by side Avith that of personal independence, which is tlie pecu- 
 liar mark, and peculiar strength, of the English character. Who 
 knows not how, in the 'Lytell Geste of Robin Hood,' they shot 
 at 'pluck-buffet,' the king among them disguised as an abbot ; 
 and every man who missed the rose-garland, 'his tackle he 
 should tyne ' ; 
 
 ' And bere a buffet on his head 
 
 Iwys ryglit all bare, 
 And all that fell on Robyn's lote, 
 
 He smote them wondei- sair. 
 
 ' Till Robyn fayled of the garlonde, 
 Three fyngers and mair.' 
 
 Then good Gilbert bids him in his turn 
 
 ' " Stand forth and take his pay." 
 
 ' "If it be so," sayd Robyn, 
 "That may no better be, 
 Syr Abbot, I delyver thee myn arrowc, 
 I pray thee, Syr, ser%'e thou me." 
 
 / ' " It falletli not for myne order," saith the kynge, 
 " Robyn, by tliy leve. 
 For to smyte no good yeman. 
 For doute I should hym greve." 
 
 ' " Smyte on boldly," sayd Robyn, 
 " I give thee large leve." 
 Anon our kynge, with that word, 
 He folde up his sieve. 
 
 ' And such a buffet he gave Robyn, 
 To grounde he yode full nere. 
 " I make myne avowe," sayd Robyn, 
 " Thou art a stalwarte frere." 
 
 ' " There is pyth in thyn arme," sayd Robyn, 
 " I trowe thou canst well shoote." 
 Thus our kynge and Robyn Hode 
 Together they are met. ' 
 
 Hard knocks in good humour, strict rules, fair play, and equal 
 justice for high and low ; this was the old outlaw spirit, which 
 has descended to their inlawed descendants ; and makes, to this 
 day, the life and marrow of an English public school. 
 
 One fixed idea tlie outlaw had — hatred of the invader. If 
 'liis herd were the king's deer,' 'his treasure was the earl's 
 purse ' ; and still oftener the purse of the foreign churchman,
 
 302 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 Frenchman or Italian, wlio had expelled the outlaw's English 
 cousins from their convents ; scourged and imprisoned them, as 
 the blessed Archbishop Lanfranc did at Canterbury, because 
 they would not own allegiance to a French abbot ; or murdered 
 them at the high altar, as did the new abbot of _ Glastonbury, 
 because they would not change their old Gregorian chant for 
 that of William of Fecamp.^ 
 
 On these mitred tyrants the outlaw had no mercy, as far as 
 their purses were concerned. Their persons, as consecrated, 
 were even to him sacred and inviolable — at least, from wounds 
 and death ; and one may suppose Hereward himself to have 
 been the first author of the laws afterward attributed to Robin 
 Hood. As for ' robbing and reving, beting and bynding,' free 
 warren was allowed against the Norman. 
 
 ' " Thereof no fors," said Robyn, 
 " We shall do well enow. 
 But look ye do no housebonde harme, 
 That tylleth wyth his plough. 
 
 ' " No more ye shall no good yeman, 
 
 That walketh by grene wood shawe ; 
 Ne no knyght, ne no squyer, 
 That will be good felawe. 
 
 ' " These bysshoppes, and these archbyshoppes, 
 Ye shall them bete and binde ; 
 The liye sheryff of Nottingham, 
 Hym liolde in your niynde." 
 
 ' Robyn loved our dear Ladye, 
 For doubt of dedely synne, 
 Wolde he never do company harm 
 That any woman was ynne.' 
 
 And even so it was with The Wake when he was in the 
 Bruneswold, if the old chroniclers are to be believed. 
 
 And now Torf rida was astonished. She had given way utterly 
 at Ely, from woman's fear and woman's disappointment. All 
 was over. All was lost. What was left, save to die ? 
 
 But — and it was a neAV and unexpected fact to one of her 
 excitable southern blood, easily raised, and easily depressed — 
 she discovei-ed that neither her husband, nor Winter, nor 
 Gery, nor Wenoch, nor Ranald of Ramsey, nor even the romanc- 
 ing harping Leofric, thouglit that all was lost. She_ argued it 
 with them, not to persuade them into base submission, but to 
 satisfy her own surprise. 
 
 ' Rut what will you do ? ' 
 
 ' Live in the greenwood.' 
 
 'And what then?' 
 
 ^ See the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
 
 XXXIV HOW HEREWARD WENT TO THE CxREENWOOD 303 
 
 ' Burn every town which a Frenchman holds, and kill every 
 Frenchman we meet.' 
 
 ' But what plan have you ? ' 
 
 ' Who wants a plan, as you call it, while he has the green 
 hollies overhead, the dun deer on the lawn, bow in his hand, 
 and sword by his side ? ' 
 
 ' But what will be the end of it all 1 ' 
 
 'We shall live till we die.' 
 
 ' But William is master of all England.' 
 
 ' W'hat is that to us 1 He is not our master.' 
 
 ' But he must be some day. You will grow fewer and fewer. 
 His government will grow stronger and stronger.' 
 
 ' What is that to us ? When we are dead, there will be 
 brave yeomen in plenty to take our place. You would not turn 
 traitor ? ' 
 
 'I? never! never! I will live and die with you in your 
 greenwood, as you call it. Only — I did not understand you 
 English.; 
 
 Torfrida did not. She was discovering the fact, which her 
 nation have more than once discovered since, that the stupid 
 valour of the Englishman never knows when it is beaten ; and 
 sometimes, by that self-satished ignorance, succeeds in not being 
 beaten after all. 
 
 So The Wake — if tlie chroniclers speak truth — assembled a 
 formidable force, well-nigh, at last, four hundred men. Winter, 
 Gery, Wenoch, Grogan, one of the Azers of Lincoln, were still 
 with liim. Kanald the seneschal still carried his standard. Of 
 Duti and Outi, the famous brothers, no more is heard. A valiant 
 Matelgar takes their jjlace ; Alfric and Sexwold and many an- 
 other gallant fugitive cast up, like scattered hounds, at the 
 sound of ' The Wake's ' war-horn. There were those among them 
 (says Gaimar) who scorned to fight single-handed less than three 
 Frenchmen. As for The Wake, he would fight seven, 
 
 ' Les quatre oscist, les treis fuiient ; 
 Naffrez, sanglant, cil s'en partireat 
 En plusurs Uus issi avint, 
 K'encontre seit tres bien se tuit. 
 De seit hommes avait vertu, 
 Un phis hardi ne fu veu.' 
 
 They ranged up the Bruneswold, dashing out to the war-cry 
 of ' A Wake ! A Wake ! ' and laying all waste with fire and 
 sword ; that is, such towns as were in the liands of Frenchmen. 
 A noble range they must have had, for gallant sportsmen. 
 Away south, between the Nene and Welland, stretched from 
 Stamford and Peterborough the still vast forests of Iiockingliam, 
 nigh twenty miles in length as the crow files, down beyond 
 Rockingham town, and Geddington Chase. To the west, they 
 had the range of the ' hunting counties,' dotted still, in the more
 
 304 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 eastern part, with innumerable copses and shaughs, the remnants 
 of the great forest, out of which, as out of Rockinghamshire, 
 have been cut those fair parks and 
 
 ' Handsome houses, 
 AVhere the wealthy nobles dwell ; 
 
 past which the Lord of Burgliley led his Welsh bride to that 
 Burghley House by Stamford town, well-nigh the noblest of 
 them all, which was in Hereward's time deep wood and free- 
 stone down. Round Exton, and Normanton, and that other 
 Burley on the Hill ; on through those Morkery woods, wliich 
 still retain tlie name of Hereward's ill-fated nephew ; north by 
 Irnham and Corby ; on to Belton and Syston (par nobile), and 
 south-west again to those still-wooded heights, whence all-but- 
 royal Belvoir looks out over the rich green vale below, did 
 Hereward and his men range far and wide, harrying the French- 
 man, and hunting the dun deer. Stags and fallow deer there 
 were in plenty. There remain to this day, in Grimsthorpe Park 
 by Bourne, the descendants of the very deer which Earl Leofric 
 and Earl Algar, and after them Hereward the outlaw, hunted in 
 the Bruneswold. 
 
 Deep tangled forest filled the lower claylands, swarming with 
 pheasant, roe, badger, and more wolves than were needed. 
 Broken park-like glades covered the upper freestones, where 
 the red deer came out from harbour for their evening graze, and 
 the partridges and plovers whirred up, and the hares loped 
 away, innumerable ; and where hollies and ferns always gave 
 dry lying for the night. What did men need more, whose bodies 
 were as stout as their hearts ? 
 
 They were poachers and robbers — and why not 1 The deer 
 liad once been theirs, the game, the land, the serfs ; and if 
 Godric of Corby slew the Irnham deer, and burned Irnham hall 
 over the head of the new French lord, and thought no harm, he 
 did but what he would with that which had been once his 
 own. 
 
 Easy it was to dash out by night, and make a raid ; to harry 
 the places wliich tliey once had owned themselves ; in the vale 
 of Belvoir to tiie west, or to tlie east in the strip of fertile land 
 which sloped down into the fen ; and levy black mail in Folk- 
 ingham, or Aslackby, or Sleaford, or any other of the 'Vills' 
 (now thriving villages) which still remain in Domesday-book, 
 and written against them the ugly and significant — 
 
 ' In Tatenai habuerunt Turgisle et Suen IIII carrucas terrae,' 
 etc. ' Hoc Ivo Taillebosc ibi habet in dominio ' — all, that is, 
 that the wars had left of them. 
 
 The said Turgisle (Torkill or Turketil misspelt by Frenchmen) 
 and Sweyn, and many a good man more — for Ivo's possessions 
 were enormous — were thorns in the sides of Ivo and his men.
 
 XXXIV HOW HEREWARD AVENT TO THE GREENWOOD 305 
 
 which must be extracted ; and the Bruneswold a nest of hornets 
 which must be smoked out at any cost. 
 
 Wherefore it befell, that once upon a day, there came riding 
 to Hereward in the Bruneswold, a horseman all alone. 
 
 And meeting with Hereward and his men, he made signs of 
 amity, and bowed himself low, and pulled out of his purse a 
 letter, protesting that he was an Englishman, and a ' good 
 felawe,' and that though he came from Lincoln town, a friend to 
 the English had sent him. 
 
 That was believable enough, for Hereward had his friends, 
 and his spies, far and wide. 
 
 And when he opened the letter, and looked first, like a wary 
 man, at the signature — a sudden thrill went through him. 
 
 It was Alftruda's. 
 
 If he was interested in her, considering what had passed 
 between them from her childhood, it was nothing to be ashamed 
 of. And yet, somehow, he felt ashamed of that same sudden 
 thrill. 
 
 And Hereward had reason to be ashamed. He had been 
 faithful to Torfrida — a virtue most rare in those days. Few 
 were faithful then, save, it may be, Baldwin of Mons to his 
 tyrant and idol, the sorceress Eichilda ; and William of Nor- 
 mandy — whatever were his other sins — to his wise, and sweet, 
 and beautiful Matilda. The stories of his coldness and cruelty 
 to her seem to rest on no foundation. One need believe them 
 as little as one does the mytli of one chronicler, that when she 
 tried to stop him from some expedition, and clung to him as he 
 sat upon his horse, he smote his spur so deep into her breast 
 that she fell dead. Tlie man had self-control, and feared God, 
 in his own wild way : therefore it was, perhaps, that he 
 conquered. 
 
 And Hereward had been faithful likewise to Torfrida, and 
 loved her with an overwhelming adoration — as all true men love. 
 And for that very reason he was the more aware, that his feel- 
 ing for Alftruda was strangely like his feeling for Torfrida ; and 
 yet strangely diftei-ent. 
 
 There was nothing in the letter that he should not have read. 
 She called him her best and dearest friend, twice the saviour of 
 lier life. What could she do in return, but, at any risk to her- 
 self, try and save his life ? The French were upon him. The 
 posse comitatus of seven counties was raising. ' Northampton, 
 Cambridge, Lincoln, Holland, Leicester, Huntingdon, Warwick,' 
 were coming to the Bruneswold to root him out. 
 
 'Lincoln?' thought Hereward. 'That nmst be Gilbert of 
 Ghent, and Oger the Breton. No ! Gilbert is not coming ; Sir 
 Ascelin is coming for liim. Holland 1 Tliat is my friend Ivo 
 Tailleliois. Well, we shall have the chance of paying oft" old 
 scores. Northampton ? The earl thereof just now is the pious 
 and loyal Waltheof, as he is of Huntingdon and Cambridge. Is 
 X H. T. w.
 
 306 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 he going to join young Fitz-Osbern from Warwick and Leices- 
 ter, to root out the last Englishman ? Why not ? That would 
 be a deed worthy of the man who married Judith, and believes 
 in the powers that be, and eats dirt daily at William's table.' 
 
 Then he read on. 
 
 Ascelin had been mentioned, he remarked, three or four 
 times in the letter, which was long, as from one lingering over 
 the paper, wishing to say more tliau she dared. At tlie end was 
 a hint of the reason : 
 
 ' Oh, that having saved me twice, you could save me once 
 more. Know you that Gospatric has been driven from his earl- 
 dom on charge of treason, and that Waltheof has Northumbria 
 in his place, as well as the parts round you ? And that Gos- 
 patric is fled to Scotland again, with his sons — my man among 
 them ? And now the report comes, that my man is slain in 
 battle on the Border ; and that I am to be given away — as I 
 have been given away twice before — to Ascelin. This I know, 
 as I know all, not only from him of Ghent, but from him of 
 Peterborough, Ascelin's uncle.' 
 
 Hereward laughed a laugh of cynical triumph — pardonable 
 enough in a broken man. 
 
 'Gospatric ! the wittol ! the woodcock ! looking at the 
 springe, and then coolly putting his head therein. Throwing 
 the hatchet after the helve ; selling his soul, and never getting 
 the price of it ! I foresaw it, foretold it, I believe to Alftruda 
 herself — foretold that he would not keep his bought earldom 
 three years. What a people we are, we English, if Gospatric is 
 — as he is — the shrewdest man among us, with a dash of canny 
 Scotsblood too. "Among the one-eyed, the blind is king," says 
 Torf rida, out of her wise ancients, and blind we -are, if he is our 
 best. No. There is one better man left, I trust ; one that will 
 never be sleepy enough to put his head into the wolf's mouth, 
 and trust the Frenchman, and that is, I The Wake.' 
 
 And Hereward boasted to himself, at Gospatric's expense, of 
 liis own superior wisdom, till his eye caught a line or two, which 
 finished the letter. 
 
 ' Oh, that you would change your mind, much as I honour 
 you for it. Oh, tJiat you would come in to the king, who loves 
 and trusts you, having seen your constancy and faith, proved 
 by so many years of affliction. Great things are open to you, 
 and great joys ; — I dare not tell you what : but I know them, if 
 you would come in. You, to waste yourself in the forest, an 
 outlaw and a savage ! Opportunity once lost, never returns ; 
 time flies fast, Hereward my friend, and we shall all grow old — 
 I tliink at times that I shall soon grow old. And the joys of life 
 will be impossible, and nothing left but vain regrets.' 
 
 _' Hey ? ' said Hereward, ' a veiy clerkly letter. I did not 
 think she was so good a scholar. Almost as good a one as 
 Torfrida.'
 
 XXXV HOW ABBOT THOROLD WAS PUT TO RA:NS0M 307 
 
 That was all he said ; and as foi* thinking, he had the iDOsse 
 comitatus of seven counties to think of. But what could those 
 great fortunes and joys be, which Alftruda did not dare to 
 describe ? 
 
 She growing old, too? Impossible : that was woman's vanity. 
 It was but two years since she was as fair as a saint in a win- 
 dow. ' She shall not marry Ascelin. I will cut his head off. 
 She shall have her own choice for once, poor child.' 
 
 And Hereward found himself worked up to a great height of 
 paternal solicitude for Alftruda, and righteous indignation 
 against Ascelin. He did not confess to liimself that he disliked 
 much, in his selhsh vanity, the notion of Alftruda's marrying 
 any one at all. He did not want to marry her himself — of 
 course not. But there is no dog in the manger so churlish on 
 such points as a vain man. There are those who will not willingly 
 let their own sisters, their own daughters, their own servants 
 marry. Why should a woman wish to marry any one but them 1 
 
 But Hereward, however vain, was no dreamer or sluggard. 
 He set to work, joyfully, cheerfully, scenting battle afar off, like 
 Job's war-liorse, and pawing for the battle. He sent back Alf- 
 truda's messenger, with this answer : — 
 
 ' Tell your lady that I kiss her hands and feet. That I cannot 
 write, for outlaws carry no pen and ink. But that what she 
 has commanded, that will I perform.' 
 
 It is noteworthy, that when Hereward showed Torfrida 
 (which he did frankly) Alftruda's letter, he did not tell her the 
 exact words of his answer, and stumbled and varied mucli, 
 vexing her thereby, when she, naturally, wished to hear tliem 
 word for word. 
 
 Then he sent out spies to the four airts of heaven. And his 
 spies, finding a friend and a meal in every hovel, brought home 
 all tlie news he needed. 
 
 He withdrew Torfrida and his men into the heart of the 
 forest — no hint of the place is given by the chronicler — cut 
 down trees, formed an abattis of trunks and branches, and 
 awaited the enemy. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 HOW ABBOT THOROLD WAS* PUT TO RANSOM 
 
 Though Hereward had as yet no feud against ' bysshoppes and 
 archbysshoppes,' save Egelsin of Selsey, who had excommuni- 
 cated him, but who was at the other end of England, lie liad 
 feud, as may be supjiosed, against Tliorold, Aljbot of Peter- 
 borougli ; and Tliorold feud likewise against him. When 
 Thorold had entered the 'Golden Borough,' hoping to fatten 
 himself with all its treasures, he liad found it a smoking ruin, 
 and its treasures gone to Ely to pay Sweyn and his Danes.
 
 308 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 And such a sacrilege, especially when he was the loser thereby, 
 was the unpardonable sin itself in the eyes of Thorold, as he 
 hoped it might be in the eyes of St. Peter. Joyfully therefore 
 he joined his friend Ivo Taillebois, when, ' with his usual pom- 
 pous verbosity,' saith Peter of Blois, writing on this very 
 matter, he asked him to join in destroying Hereward. 
 
 Nevertheless, with all the French chivalry at their back, it 
 liehoved them to move with caution ; for (so says the chronicler) 
 ' Hereward had in these days very many foreigners, as well as 
 landsfolk, who had come to him to practise and learn war, and 
 fled from their masters and friends when they heard of his 
 fame ; some of them even the king's courtiers, who had come to 
 see whether those things whicli they heard were true, whom 
 Herewai'd nevertheless received cautiously, on plighted trotli 
 and oath.' 
 
 So Ivo Taillebois summoned all his men, and all other men's 
 men who would join him, and rode forth through Spalding and 
 Bourne, having announced to Lucia, his bride, that he was 
 going to slay her one remaining relative ; and when she wept, 
 cursed and kicked her, as he did once a week. After which he 
 came to Thorold of Peterborough. 
 
 So on the two worthies rode from Peterborough to Stamford, 
 and from Stamford into the wilderness, no man knows whither. 
 
 ' And far they rode by busli and shaugh, 
 And far by moss and mire : ' 
 
 but never found a track of The Wake or his men. And Ivo 
 Taillebois left off boasting how he would burn Torfrida over a 
 slow lire, and confined himself to cursing ; and Abbot Thorold 
 left off warbling the song of Poland as if he had been going to 
 a second battle of Hastings, and wished himself in warm bed at 
 Peterborough. 
 
 But at the last they struck upon a great horse-track, and fol- 
 lowed it at their best pace for several miles ; and yet no sign of 
 Hereward. 
 
 ' Catch an Englishman,' quoth the abbot. 
 
 But that was not so easy. Tlie poor folk had hidden them- 
 selves, like Israel of old, in thickets, and dens, and caves of 
 rocks, at the far-off* sight of the foreign tyrants ; and not a 
 living soul had appeared for twenty miles. At last they caught 
 a ragged wretch herding swine, and haled him up to Ivo. 
 
 ' Have you seen Hereward, villain ? ' asked he, through an in- 
 terpreter. 
 
 'Nay.'_ 
 
 'You lie. These are his fresh horse-tracks, and you must 
 have seen him pass.' 
 
 'Ehr 
 
 ' Thrust out one of his eyes, and he will find his tongue.'
 
 XXXV HOW ABBOT THOROLD ^YAS PUT TO RANSOM 309 
 
 It was done. 
 
 ' Will you answer now ? ' 
 
 The poor wretch only howled. 
 
 ' Thrust out the other.' 
 
 ' No, not that ! Mercy: I will tell. He has gone by this four 
 hours. How have you not met him ? ' 
 
 ' Fool ! The hoofs point onward there.' 
 
 ' Ay ' — and the fellow could hardly hide a grin — ' but he had 
 shod all his horses backwards.' 
 
 A storm of execration followed. They might be thrown 
 twenty miles out of their right road by the stratagem. 
 
 ' So you had seen Hereward, and would not tell ? Put out his 
 other eye,' said Tailleljois, as a vent to his own feelings. 
 
 And they turned their horses' heads, and rode back, leaving 
 the man blind in the forest. 
 
 The day was waning now. The fog hung henvj on the tree- 
 tops, and dripped upon their heads. The horses were getting 
 tired, and slipped and tumbled in the deep clay paths. The 
 footmen were more tired still, and, cold and hungry, straggled 
 more and more. The horse-tracks led over an open lawn of 
 grass and fern, with here and there an ancient thorn, and round 
 it on three sides thick wood of oak and beech, with under copse 
 of holly and hazel. Into that wood the horse-tracks led, by a 
 path on which there was but room for one horse at a time. 
 
 ' Here they are at last ! ' cried Ivo. ' I see the fresh foot- 
 marks of men, as well as horses. Push on, knights and men-at- 
 arms.' 
 
 The abbot looked at the dark, dripping wood, and meditated. 
 
 ' I think that it will be as well for some of us to remain here : 
 and, spreading our men along the woodside, prevent the escape 
 of the villains. A moi, hommes d'armes ! ' 
 
 ' As you like. I will go in, and bolt the rabbit ; and you 
 .shall snap him as he comes out.' 
 
 And Ivo, who was as brave as a bull-dog, thrust his horse 
 into the path, while the abbot sat shivering outside. ' Certain 
 nobles of higher rank,' says Peter de Blois, 'followed his 
 example, not wishing to rust their armour, or tear their fine 
 clothes, in the damp copse.' 
 
 The knights and men-at-arms straggled slowly into the 
 forest, some by the path, some elsewhere, grumbling audibly at 
 the black work before them. At last the crashing of the 
 branches died away, and all was still. 
 
 Abbot Thorold sat there upon his shivering horse, shivering 
 himself as the cold pierced through liis wet mail ; and as near 
 an hour passed, and no sign of foe or friend appeared, he cursed 
 the hour in which he took off the beautiful garments of the 
 sanctuary to endure those of the battle-held. He thought of a 
 warm chamVjer, warm bath, warm footcloths, warm pheasant, 
 and warm wine. He kicked his freezing iron feet in the freez-
 
 310 HEREWARD THE AVAKE ciiai>. 
 
 ing iron stirrup. He tried to blow liis nose with his freezing 
 iron hand ; Ijut dropt liis handkerchief (an almost unique 
 luxury in those days) into the mud, and his horse trod on it. 
 He tried to warble the song of Roland : but the words exploded 
 in a cough and a sneeze. And so dragged on the weary hours, 
 says the chronicler, nearly all day, till the ninth hour. But 
 never did they see coming out of the forest, the men who had 
 gone in. 
 
 A shout from his nej^liew, Sir Ascelin, made all turn their 
 lieads. Behind them, on the open lawn, in tlie tliroat between 
 the woods by which they had entered, were some forty knights, 
 galloping towards them. 
 
 'Ivo?' 
 
 ' No ! ' almost shrieked the abbot. ' Tliere is the Wake 
 bannei'. It is Hereward.' 
 
 ' There is Winter on his left,' cried one. ' And there, with 
 the standard, is the accursed monk, Ranald of Ramsey.' 
 
 And on they came, liaving debouched from the wood some 
 two hundred yards off, beliind a roll in the lawn, just far 
 enougli off to charge as soon as they were in line. 
 
 On they came, two deep, with lances high over their shoulder-s, 
 heads and heels well down, while the green tufts flew behind 
 them. ' A moi, hommes d'armes ! ' sliouted the abbot. But too 
 late. The French turned right and left. To form was impos- 
 sible, ere the human wliirlwind would be upon them. 
 
 Another half minute, and with a shout of 'A Wake! A 
 Wake!' they were struck, ridden through, hurled over, and 
 trampled in tlie mud. 
 
 ' I yield. Grace ! I yield ! ' cried Thorold, struggling from 
 under his horse : but there was no one to wliom to yield. The 
 knights' backs were fifty yards off, their I'ight arms high in the 
 air, striking and stabbing. 
 
 The battle was a Voutrance. Tliere was no quarter given 
 that day. 
 
 ' And he that came live out thereof 
 Was he that ran away.' 
 
 The abbot tried to make for the wood : but ere he could gain 
 it, the knights had turned, and one rode straight at him, throw- 
 ing away a broken lance, and drawing his sword. 
 
 Abbot Thorold may not have been the coward which Peter 
 of Blois would have him, over and above being the bully which 
 all men would have him ; but if so, even a worm will turn ; and 
 so did the abbot : he drew sword from thigh, got well under 
 his shield, his left foot forward, and struck one blow for his 
 life, at the right place — his foe's bare knee. 
 
 But he had to do with a warier man than himself. There 
 was a quick jerk of the rein ; the horse swerved round right 
 upon him, and knocked him head over heels ; while his blow 
 went into empty air.
 
 XXXV HOW ABBOT THOROLD WAS PUT TO RANSOM 311 
 
 ' Yield, or die ! ' cried the knight, leaping from his horse, and 
 kneeling on his head. 
 
 ' I am a man of God, an abbot, churchman, Thorold.' 
 
 ' Man of all the devils ! ' and the knight lugged him up, and 
 bound his arms behind him with the abbot's own belt. 
 
 ' Ahoi ! Here ! I have caught a fish. I have got the Golden 
 Borough in my purse ! ' roared he. ' How much has St. Peter 
 gained since we borrowed of him last, abbot? He will have to 
 pay out the silver pennies bonnily, if he wishes to get back 
 thee.' 
 
 ' Blaspheme not, godless barbarian ! ' Whereat the knight 
 kicked him. 
 
 'And you have Thorold the scoundrel, Winter?' cried Here- 
 ward, galloping up. ' And we have three or more dainty French 
 knights, and a viscount of I know not where among them. 
 This is a good day's work. Now for Ivo and his tail.' 
 
 And the abbot, with four or five more prisoners, were hoisted 
 on to their own horses, tied firmly, and led away into the 
 forest path. 
 
 ' Do not leave a wounded man to die,' cried a knight who lay 
 on the lawn. 
 
 ' Never we. I will come back and put you out of your pain,' 
 quoth some one. 
 
 ' Siward ! Siward Le Blanc ! Are you in this meinie ? ' cried 
 the knight in French. 
 
 'That am I. Who calls?' 
 
 ' For God's sake save him ! ' cried Thorold. ' He is my own 
 
 nephew, and I will pay- 
 
 ' You will need all your money for yourself,' said Siward the 
 White, riding back. 
 
 ' Are you Sir Ascelin of Ghent ? ' 
 
 ' That am I, your host of old.' 
 
 ' I wish I had met you in better company. But friends we 
 are, and friends must be.' 
 
 And he dismounted, and did his best for the wounded man, 
 promising him to return and fetch him off" before night, or send 
 yeomen to do so. 
 
 As he pushed on through the wood, the abbot began to see 
 , signs of a fight ; riderless horses crashing through the copse, 
 wounded men straggling back, to be cut down without mercy 
 by the English. The war had been a Coutmnce for a long while. 
 None gave or asked quarter. The knights might be kept for 
 ransom ; they had money. The wretched men of the lower 
 classes, who had none, were slain : as they would have slain the 
 Englisli. 
 
 Soon they heard the noise of battle ; and saw horsemen and 
 footmen pell-mell, tangled in an abattis, from behind which 
 archers and cross-bowmen shot tliem down in safety. 
 
 Hereward dashed forward with a shout, and at that the
 
 312 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 French, taken in the flank, fled, and were smitten as they fled, 
 hii? and thigh. 
 
 Hereward bade them spare a fugitive, and bring him to him. 
 
 ' I give you your life ; so run, and carry my message. That 
 is Taiilebois' banner there forward, is it not 1 ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 ' Then go after him, and tell him, — Hereward has the Abbot 
 of Burgh, and half a dozen knights, safe by the heels. And 
 unless Ivo clears the wood of his men by nightfall, I will hang 
 every one of them ujo for the crows before morning.' 
 
 Ivo got the message, and having had enough fighting for the 
 day, drew off", says the chronicler, for the sake of the abbot and 
 his fellow-captives. 
 
 Two hours after the abbot and the other prisoners were 
 sitting, unbound but unarmed, in the forest encampment, wait- 
 ing for a right good meal ; with Torfrida bustling about them, 
 after binding up the very few wounded amongst their own 
 men. 
 
 Every courtesy was shown them ; and their hearts were 
 lifted up, as they beheld apjDroaching among the trees great 
 caldrons of good soup ; forest salads ; red deer and roe roasted 
 on the wood-embers ; spits of pheasants and partridges, larks 
 and buntings, thrust ofi" one by one by fair hands into the 
 burdock leaves which served as platters ; and last but not least, 
 jacks of ale and wine, appearing mysteriously from a cool old 
 stone quarry. Abbot Thorold ate to his heart's content, comi^li- 
 mented every one, vowed he would forswear all French cooks 
 and take to the greenwood himself, and was as gracious and 
 courtly as if he had been at the new palace at Winchester. 
 
 And all the more for this reason — that he had intended to 
 overawe the English barbarians by his polished French manners. 
 He found those of Hereward and Torfrida, at least, as polished 
 as his own. 
 
 ' I am glad you are content, lord abbot,' said Torfrida ; ' I 
 trust you prefer dining with me to burning me, as you meant 
 to do.' 
 
 ' I burn such jDeerless beauty! I injure a form made only 
 for the courts of kings ! Heaven and all saints, knighthood 
 and all chivalry, forbid. What Taiilebois may have said, I 
 know not ! I am no more answerable for his intentions than 
 for his parentage, — or his success this day. Let churls be 
 churls, and wood-cutters wood-cutters. I at least, thanks to 
 my ancestors, am a gentleman.' 
 
 'And, as a gentleman, will of course contribute to the plea- 
 sure of your hosts. It will surely please you to gratify us with 
 one stave at least of that song which has made you famous 
 among all knights,' holding out a harp. 
 
 'I blush : but obey. A harp in the greenwood 1 A court in 
 the wilderness ! What joy ! '
 
 XXXV HOAV ABBOT THOROLD WAS PUT TO RANSOM 313 
 
 And the vain abbot took the harp, and said — ' These, if you 
 will allow my modesty to choose, are the staves on which I 
 especially pride myself. The staves which Taillefer — you will 
 pardon my mentioning him ' 
 
 ' Why pardon 1 A noble minstrel he was, and a brave 
 warrior, though our foe. And often have I longed to hear liim, 
 little thinking that I should hear instead the maker himself.' 
 
 So said Hereward ; and the abbot sang — those wondrous 
 staves, where Roland, left alone of all the Paladins, finds death 
 come on him fast. And on the Pyrensean peak, beneatli the 
 pine, he lays himself, ' his face toward the gi-ound ; and under 
 him his sword and magic horn, that Charles his lord may say, 
 and all his folk, the gentle count he died a conqueror ; ' and 
 then ' turns his eyes southward toward Spain ; betakes himself 
 to remember many things ; of so many lands which he con^- 
 quered valiantly ; of pleasant France, of the men of his lineage, 
 of Charlemagne his lord, who brought him up. He could not 
 help to weep and sigh, but yet himself he would not forget. 
 He bewailed his sins, and prayed God's mercy : — True Father, 
 who ne'er yet didst lie, who raised St. Lazarus from death, and 
 guarded Daniel from the lions : Guard my soul from all i^erils, 
 for the sins which in my life I did. His right glove then he 
 offered to God ; St. Gabriel took it from his hand ; On his arm 
 the chief bowed down, with joined hands he went unto his end. 
 God sent down his angel Cherubim, and St. Michael whom men 
 call " del peril." Together with them St. Gabriel he came ; the 
 soul of the count they bore to Paradise.' 
 
 And the abbot ended, sadly and gently, without that wild 
 ' Aoi ! ' the war-cry with which he usually ends his staves. And 
 the wild men of the woods were softened and saddened by the 
 melody ; and as many as understood French said, when he 
 finished — ' Amen ! so may all good knights die ! ' 
 
 ' Thou art a great maker, abbot ! They told truths of thee. 
 Sing us more of thy great courtesy.' 
 
 And he sang them the staves of the Olifant, the magic horn 
 — How Roland would not sound it in his pride, and sounded it 
 at Turpin's bidding, but too late ; and how liis temples burst 
 with that great blast, and Charles and all his peers heard it 
 through the gorges, leagues away in France. And then his 
 ' Aoi ! ' rang forth so loud and clear, like any trumpet blast, 
 under the oaken glades, that the wild men leaped to their feet, 
 and shouted ' Health to the gleeman ! Health to the Abbot 
 Tliorold ! ' 
 
 'I have won them,' thought the abbot to himself. Strange 
 mixture that man must have been, if all which is told of him 
 is true ; a very typical Norman, compact of cunning and 
 ferocity, chivalry and poetry, vanity and superstition, and yet 
 able enough to help to conquer England for the pope. 
 
 Then he pressed Hereward to sing, with many compliments ;
 
 314 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 and Hereward sang, and sang again, and all his men crowded 
 round liim as the outlaws of Judtiea may have crowded round 
 David in Carmel or Hebron, to hear, like children, old ditties 
 which they loved tlie better the oftener tliey heard them. 
 
 'No wonder tliat you can keej) these knights together, if you 
 can charm them thus with song. Would that I could hear you 
 singing thus in William's hall.' 
 
 ' No more of that, sir abbot. The only music which I have 
 for William is the music of steel on steel.' 
 
 Hereward answered sharply, because he was half of Thorold's 
 mind. 
 
 ' Now,' said Torfrida, as it grew late, ' we must ask our 
 noble guest for wliat he can give us as easily and well as he 
 can song — and that is news. We hear nought here in the 
 greenwood, and must throw oneself on the kindness of a chance 
 visitor.' 
 
 The abbot leapt at the bait, and told them news, court 
 gossip, bringing in great folks' names and his own, as often and 
 as familiarly mingled as he could. 
 
 ' What of Eichtlda ? ' asked Torfrida. 
 
 'Ever since young Arnoul was killed at Cassel ' 
 
 'Arnoul killed r shrieked Torfrida. 
 
 ' Is it possible that you do not know 1 ' 
 
 ' How should I know, shut up in Ely for — years it 
 seems.' 
 
 ' But they fought at Cassel three months before you went to 
 Ely.' 
 
 ' Be it so. Only tell me. Arnoul killed ! ' 
 
 Then the abbot told, not without feeling, a fearful story. 
 
 Robert the Prison and Richilda had come to open war ; and 
 Gerbod the Fleming, Earl of Chester, had gone over from Eng- 
 land to help llobert. William had sent Fitz Osbern, Earl of 
 Hereford, the scourge and tyrant of the Welsh, to help Eichilda. 
 Fitz Osbern had married her, there and then. She had asked 
 help of her liege lord, the King of France, and he had 
 sent her troops. Robert and Bichilda had fought on St. 
 Peter's day, 1071 — nearly two years before, at Bavinchoven, by 
 Cassel. 
 
 Eichilda had jDlayed the heroine, and routed Robert's left 
 wing, taken liim prisoner, and sent him off to St. Omer. Men 
 said that she had done it by her enchantments. But her en- 
 chantments betrayed her nevertheless. Fitz Osbern, her bride- 
 groom, fell dead. Young Arnoul had two horses killed under 
 him. Then Gerbod smote him to the ground ; and Richilda 
 and her troops fled in horror. Richilda was taken, and ex- 
 changed for the Frison ; at which the King of Prance, being 
 enraged, had come down and burnt St. Omer. Then Richilda, 
 undaunted, had raised fresh troops to avenge lier son. Then 
 Robert had met them at Broqueroie by Mons, and smote them
 
 XXXV HOW ABBOT THOROLD WAS PUT TO RANSOM 315 
 
 with a dreadful slaughter.^ Tlien Eichilda had turned and tied 
 wildly into a convent ; and, so men said, tortured herself night 
 and day with fearful penances, if by any means she might atone 
 for her great sins. 
 
 Torfrida heard, and laid her head upon lier knees, and wept 
 so bitterly that the abbot entreated pardon for liaving pained 
 her so much. 
 
 The news had a deep and lasting effect on her. The thought 
 of Richilda shivering and starving in the squalid darkness of a 
 convent abode by her thenceforth. Should she ever find herself 
 atoning in like wise for her sorceries — harmless as they had 
 been; for her ambitions — just as they had been; for her 
 crimes 1 But slie had committed none. No, she had sinned in 
 many things : but she was not as Eichilda. And yet in the 
 loneliness and sadness of tlie forest, she could not put Eichilda 
 from before the eyes of her mind. 
 
 It saddened Hereward likewise. For Eichilda he cared little. 
 But that boy. — How he had loved him ! How he had taught 
 him to ride, and sing, and joust, and liandle sword, and all the 
 art of war. How his own rough soul liad been the better for 
 that love. How lie had looked forward to the day when Arnoul 
 sliould be a great prince, and requite him with love. Now he 
 was gone. Gone 1 Who was not gone, or going ? He seemed 
 to himself the last tree in the forest. When should his time 
 come, and the lightning strike him down to rot beside tlie rest? 
 But he tost the sad thouglits aside. He could not afford to 
 nourish them. It was his only chance of life, to be merry and 
 desperate. 
 
 ' Well ! ' said Hei-eward, ere they hapt themselves up for the 
 night. ' We owe you thanks. Abbot Thorold, for an evening 
 worthy of a king's court ratlier than a holly bush.' 
 
 ' I have won him over,' thouglit the abbot. 
 
 ' So charming a courtier — so sweet a minstrel — so agreeable 
 a newsmonger — could I keep you in a cage for ever, and hang 
 you on a bough, I were but too liappy : but you are too line a 
 bird to sing in captivity. So you must go, I fear, and leave us 
 to the nightingales. And I will take for your ransom ' 
 
 AV)bot Tliorold's heart beat high. 
 
 ' Thirty thousand silver marks.' 
 
 'Thirty thousand fiends ! ' 
 
 'My beau sire, will you undervalue yourself? Will you de- 
 grade yourself 1 I took Al)bot Tliorold, fi-om his talk, to be a 
 man who set even a higlier value on liimself tlian other men set 
 on him. What higher compliment can I pay to your vast 
 worth, than making your i-ansom high accordingly, after the 
 spirit of our ancient Englisli laws ? Take it as it is meant, 
 beau sire ; be proud to pay the money ; and we will throw 
 
 ^ The place was called till late, and may be now, ' Tlie Hedges of 
 Death.'
 
 316 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 you Sir Ascelin into the bargain, as he seems a friend of 
 Siward's.' 
 
 Thorold hoped that Herewai-d was drunk, and might forget, 
 or relent : but he was so sore at lieart that he slept not a wink 
 that night. 
 
 But in the morning he found, to his sorrow, that Hei-eward 
 had been as sober as himself. 
 
 In fine, he had to pay the money ; and was a poor man all 
 his days. 
 
 ' Aha ! Sir Ascelin,' said Hereward apart, as he bade them 
 all farewell with many courtesies. ' I think I have put a spoke 
 in your wheel about the fair Alftruda.' 
 
 ' Eh ? How ? Most courteous victor ? ' 
 
 ' Sir Ascelin is not a very wealthy gentleman.' 
 
 Ascelin laughed assent. 
 
 ' Nudus intravi, nudus exeo — England ; and I fear now, this 
 mortal life likewise.' 
 
 'But he looked to his rich uncle the abbot, to further a 
 certain marriage-project of his. And of course neither my 
 friend Gilbert of Ghent, nor my enemy William of Normandy, 
 is likely to give away so rich an heiress without some gratifi- 
 cation in return.' 
 
 ' Sir Hereward knows the world, it seems.' 
 
 ' So he has been told before. And therefoi^e, having no in- 
 tention that Sir Ascelin — however worthy of any and every fair 
 lady — should marry this one, he took care to cut off the stream 
 at the fountain head. If he hears that the suit is still pushed, 
 he may cut off anotlier head beside the fountain's.' 
 
 '.There will be no need,' said Ascelin, laughing again. 'You 
 have very sufficiently ruined my uncle and my hopes.' 
 
 ' My head ? ' said he, as soon as Hereward was out of hearing. 
 ' If I do not cut off thy head ere all is over, there is neither luck 
 nor craft left among Frenchmen. I shall catch The Wake sleep- 
 ing some day, let him be never so Wakeful.' 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 HOW ALFTRUDA WROTE TO HEREWARD 
 
 The weary months ran on, from summer into winter, and 
 winter into summer again, for two years and more, and neither 
 Torfrida nor Hereward was the better for them. Hope deferred 
 maketh the heart sick ; and a sick heart is but too apt to be a 
 peevisli one. So there were fits of despondency, jars, mutual 
 recriminations. ' If I had not taken your advice, I should not 
 have been here.' 'If I had not loved you so well, I might have 
 been very differently off.' And so forth. The words were 
 wiped away the next hour, perhaps the next minute, by sacred
 
 XXXVI HOW ALFTRUDA WROTE TO HEREWARD 317 
 
 kisses : but they had been said, and would be recollected, and 
 perhaps said again. 
 
 Then, again, the ' merry greenwood ' was merry enough in 
 the summer tide, when shaughs were green, and 
 
 ' The woodwele sang, and would not cease, 
 Sitting upon the spray, 
 So loud, it wakened Robin Hood 
 In the greenwood where he lay.' 
 
 But it was a sad place enough, when the autumn fog crawled 
 round the gorse, and dripped otf the hollies, and choked alike 
 the breath and the eyesight ; when the air sickened with the 
 graveyard smell of rotting leaves, and the rain-water stood in 
 the clay holes over the poached and sloppy lawns. 
 
 It was merry enough, too, when they were in winter quarters 
 in friendly farmhouses, as long as the bright sharp frosts 
 lasted, and they tracked the hares and deer merrily over the 
 frozen snows : but it was doleful enough in those same farm- 
 houses in the howling wet weather, when wind and rain lashed 
 in through the unglazed window and ill-made roof, and there 
 were coughs and colds and rheumatisms, and Torfrida ached 
 from head to foot, and once could not stand upright for a whole 
 month together, and every cranny was stufl'ed up with bits of 
 board and rags, keeping out light and air as well as wind and 
 water ; and there was little difterence between the short day 
 and the long night ; and the men gambled and wrangled amid 
 clouds of peat reek, over draught-boards and chessmen which 
 they liad carved for themselves, and Torfrida sat stitching and 
 sewing, making and mending, her eyes bleared with peat smoke, 
 her hands sore and coarse from continued labour, her cheek 
 bronzed, her face thin and hollow, and all her beauty worn 
 away for very trouble. Then sometimes there was not enough 
 to eat, and every one grumbled at her ; or some one's clothes 
 were not mended, and she was grumbled at again. And some- 
 times a foraging party brought home liquor, and all who could 
 got drunk to drive dull care away ; and Hereward, forgetful of 
 all her warnings, got more than was good for liiin likewise ; and 
 at night she coiled herself up in her furs, cold and contemp- 
 tuous • and Hereward coiled himself up, guilty and defiant, and 
 woke her again and again with startings and wild words in his 
 sleep. And she felt that lier beauty was gone, and that he saw 
 it ; and she fancied liim (perhaps it was only fancy) less tender 
 tlian of yore ; and then in very pride disdained to take any care ' 
 of her person, and said to herself, though slie dare not say it to 
 him, that if he only loved her for lier face, he did not love her 
 at all. And because she fancied him cold at times, she was cold 
 likewise, and grew less and less caressing, when for his sake, as 
 well as her own, she should have grown more so day by day. 
 
 Alas ! for them. There are many excuses. Sorrow may be a
 
 318 HEREWARD THE AVAKE chap. 
 
 softening medicine at last, but at tirst it is apt to be a liarden- 
 ing one ; and that savage outlaw life which they were leading 
 can never have been a wholesome one for any soul of man, and 
 its graces must have existed only in the brains of harpers and 
 gleemen. Away from law, from self-restraint, from refinement, 
 from elegance, from the very sound of a church-going bell, they 
 were sinking gradually down to the level of the coarse men and 
 women whom tliey saw ; the worse and not the better parts of 
 both their characters were getting the upper hand ; and it was 
 but too possible that after a while the hero might sink into the 
 ruffian, the lady into a slattern and a shrew. 
 
 But in justice to them be it said, that neither of them had 
 complained of the other to any living soul. Their love had been 
 as yet too perfect, too sacred, for them to confess to another 
 (and thereby confess to themselves) that it could in any wise 
 fail. They had each idolised the other, and been too proud of 
 their idolatry to allow that their idol could crumble or decay. 
 
 And yet at last that point too was reached. One day they 
 were wrangling about somewhat, as they too often wrangled, 
 and Hereward in his temper let fall the words, 'As I said to 
 Winter the other day, you grow harder and harder upon me.' 
 
 Torfrida started and fixed on him wide, terrible, scornful eyes. 
 ' So you complain of me to your boon companions 1 ' 
 
 And she turned and went away without a word. A gulf had 
 opened between them. They hardly spoke to each other for a 
 week. 
 
 Hereward complained of Torfrida 1 What if Torfrida should 
 complain of Hereward ? But to whom 1 Not to the coarse 
 women round her ! her pride revolted from tliat thought: — and 
 yet she longed for counsel, for sympathy — to open her heart but 
 to one fellow-woman. She would go to the Lady Godiva at 
 Crowland, and take counsel of her, whether there was any 
 method (for slie put it to herself) of saving Hereward ; for she 
 saw but too clearly that he was fast forgetting all her teaching, 
 and falling back to a point lower than that even from which she 
 had raised him up. 
 
 To go to Crowland was not difficult. It was mid-winter. The 
 dykes were all frozen. Hereward was out foraging in the Lin- 
 colnshire wolds. So Torfrida, taking advantage of his absence, 
 proposed another foraging party to Crowland itself. She 
 wanted stufi' for clotlies, needles, tliread, wliat not. A dozen 
 stout fellows volunteered at once to take her. The friendly 
 monks of Crowland would feast them royally, and send them 
 home heaped with all manner of good things ; while as for 
 meeting Ivo Taillebois' men, if they had but three to one 
 against tliem, there was a fair chance of killing a few, and 
 carrying off their clothes and weapons, which would be useful. 
 So they made a sledge, tied beef bones underneath it, put 
 Torfrida and the girl thereon, well wrapped in deer and fox and
 
 xxxvr HOAV ALFTRUDA WROTE TO HEREAVARD 319 
 
 badger skin, and then putting on their skates, swept them over 
 the ten to Crowland, singing like larks along the dykes. 
 
 And Torfrida went in to Godiva, and wept ui^on her knees : 
 and Godiva wept likewise, and gave her such counsel as she 
 could — how if the woman will keep the man heroic, she must 
 keep herself not heroic only but devout likewise ; how she her- 
 self, by that one deed which had rendered her name famous 
 then, and famous (tliough she never dreamt thereof) now and it 
 may be to the end of time — had once for all tamed, chained, 
 and, as it were, converted the heart of her fierce young lord ; 
 and enabled her to train him in good time into the most wise, 
 most just, most pious, of all King Edward's earls. 
 
 And Torfrida said yes, and yes, and yes, and felt in her heart 
 that she knew all that already. Had not she too taught, en- 
 treated, softened, civilised ? Had not she too spent her life 
 upon a man, and that man a wolf's head and a landless outlaw, 
 more utterly than Godiva could ever have spent hers on one 
 who lived lapped in luxury, and wealth, and i:)ower ? Torfrida 
 had done her best ; and she had failed : or at least fancied in 
 her haste that she had failed. 
 
 What she wanted was not counsel, but love. And she clung 
 round the Lady Godiva, till the broken and ruined widow 
 opened all her heart to her, and took her in her arms, and 
 fondled her as if she had been a babe. And the two women 
 spoke fevv words after that, for indeed there was nothing to be 
 said. Only at last, ' My child, my child,' cried Godiva, ' better 
 for thee, body and soul, to be here with me in the house of God, 
 than there amid evil spirits and deeds of darkness in the wild 
 woods.' 
 
 ' Not a cloister, not a cloister,' cried Torfrida, shuddering, and 
 lialf struggling to get away. 
 
 ' It is the only place, poor wilful child, the only place this side 
 the grave, in which we wretched creatures, who to our woe are 
 women born, can find aught of rest or peace. By us sin came 
 into the world, and Eve's curse lies heavy on us to this day, and 
 our desire is to our lords, and they rule over us ; and when the 
 slave can work for her master no more, what better than to 
 crawl into the house of God, and lay down our crosses at the 
 foot of His cross, and die 1 You too will come here, Torfrida, 
 some day, I know it well. You too will come here to rest.' 
 
 'Never, never,' shrieked Torfrida, 'never to these horrid 
 vaults. I will die in the fresh air. I will be buried under the 
 green hollies ; and the nightingales, as they wander up from 
 my own Provence, shall build and sing over my grave. Never, 
 never ! ' murnnired she to herself all the more eagerly, because 
 something witliin her said tliat it would come to pass. 
 
 The two women went into the church to matins, and prayed 
 long and fervently. And at the early day-break, the party went 
 back laden with good things and hearty blessings, and caught
 
 320 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 one of Ivo Taillebois' men by the way, and slew him, and got oft' 
 him a new suit of clothes in which the poor fellow was going 
 courting ; and so they got home safe into the Bruneswold. 
 
 But Torfrida had not found rest unto her soul. For the first 
 time in lier life since she became the bride of Hereward, slie had 
 had a confidence concerning him and unknown to him. It was 
 to his own mother — true. And yet she felt as if she had be- 
 trayed him : but then had he not betrayed her ? And to Winter 
 of all men ? 
 
 It might have been two months afterwards that Martin 
 Lightfoot put a letter into Torfrida's hand. 
 
 The letter was addressed to Hereward : but there was no- 
 thing strange in Martin's bringing it to his mistress. Ever since 
 their marriage, she had opened and generally answered the very 
 few epistles with which her liusband was troubled. 
 
 She was going to open this one as a matter of course, when 
 glancing at the superscription she saw, or fancied she saw, that 
 it was in a woman's hand. She looked at it again. It was 
 sealed plainly with a woman's seal ; and she looked up at 
 Martin Lightfoot. She had remarked as he gave her the letter 
 a sly significant look in his face. 
 
 ' What dost thou know of this letter 1 ' she inquired sharply. 
 
 ' That it is from the Countess Alftruda, whosoever she may 
 be.' 
 
 A chill struck through her heart. True, Alftruda had written 
 before, only to warn Hereward of danger to his life — and hers. 
 She might be writing again, only for the same purpose. But 
 still, she did not wish that either Hereward or she should owe 
 Alftruda their lives, or anything. They had struggled on 
 through weal and woe without her for many a year. Let them 
 do so without her still. That Alftruda had once loved Hereward 
 she knew well. Why should she not ? The wonder was to her 
 that every woman did not love him. But she had long since 
 gauged Alftruda's character, and seen in it a persistence like 
 her own, yet, as she proudly hoiked, of a lower temper ; the per- 
 sistence of the base weasel, not of the noble liound : yet the 
 creeping weasel might endure, and win, when the hound was 
 tired out by his own gallant pace. And there was a something in 
 the tone of Alftruda's last letter, wliich seemed to tell her that 
 the weasel was still upon the scent of its game. But she was 
 too proud to mistrust Hereward, or rather, to seem to mistrust 
 him. And yet — how dangerous Alftruda might be as a rival, if 
 rival she chose to be. She was up in the world now, free, rich, 
 gay, beautiful, a favourite at Queen Matilda's court, while 
 she 
 
 ' How came this letter into thy hands ? ' asked she as care- 
 lessly as she could. 
 
 'I was in Peterborough last night,' said Martin, 'concerning 
 little matters of my own, and there came to me in the street a
 
 XXXVI HOW ALFTRUDA WROTE TO HEREWARD. 321 
 
 bonny young page with smart jacket on his back, smart cap on 
 his head, and smiles and bows, and " You are one of Hereward's 
 men," quoth he. " Say that again, young jackanapes," said I, 
 "and I'll cut your tongue out," whereat he took fright and all 
 but cried. He was very sorry, and meant no harm, but he had 
 a letter for my master, and he heard I was one of his men. 
 " Who told him that ? " Well, one of the monks, he could not 
 justly say which, or wouldn't, and I, thinking the letter of more 
 importance than my own neck, ask him quietly into my friend's 
 house. There lie pulls out this and five silver pennies, and I 
 shall have five more if I bring an answer back : but to none 
 than Hereward must I give it. With that I, calling my friend, 
 who is an honest woman, and nigh as strong in the arms as 1 
 am, ask her to clap her back against the door, and pull out my 
 axe. " Now," said I, " I must know a little more about this 
 letter. Tell me, knave, who gave it thee, or I'll si^lit thy skull." 
 The young man cries and blubbers ; and says that it is the 
 Countess Alftruda, who is staying in the monastery, and that 
 he is her serving-man, and that it is as much as my life is worth 
 to touch a hair of his head, and so forth — so far so good. Then 
 I asked him again, who told him I was my master's man ? — and 
 he confessed that it was Herluin the prior — he that was Lady 
 Godiva's chaplain of old, whom my master robbed of his money 
 when he had the cell of Bourne years agone. Very well, quoth 
 I to myself, that's one more count on our score against Master 
 Herluin. Then I asked him how Herluin and the Lady 
 Alftruda came to know aught of each other ? and he said that 
 she had been questioning all about the monastery without 
 Abbot Thorold's knowledge, for one that knew Hereward and 
 favoured him well. That was all I could get from the knave, he 
 cried so for fright. So I took his money and his letter, warning 
 liim that if he betrayed me, there were those who would roast 
 liim alive before he was done with me. And so away over the 
 town wall, and ran here five-and-twenty miles before breakfast, 
 and thought it better as you see to give the letter to my lady 
 first.' 
 
 ' You have been officious,' said Torfrida coldly. ' 'Tis ad- 
 dressed to your master. Take it to him. Go." 
 
 Martin Lightfoot whistled and obeyed, while Torfrida walked 
 away proudly and silently with a beating heart. 
 
 Again Godiva's words came over her. Should she end in the 
 convent of Crowland ? And suspecting, fearing, imagining all 
 sorts of baseless i^hantoms, slie hardened her heart into a great 
 hardness. 
 
 i\Iartin had gone with the lettei', and Torfrida never heai-d 
 any more of it. 
 
 So Hereward had secrets whicli he would not tell to her. At last! 
 
 That, at least, was a misery which she would not confide to 
 Lady Godiva, or to any soul on earth. 
 
 Y H. T. w.
 
 322 HEREWARD THE AVAKE chap. 
 
 But a misery it was, such a misery as none can delineate, save 
 those wlio have endured it themselves, or had it confided to 
 them by another. And happy are they to whom neither has 
 befallen. 
 
 She wandered out and into the wild wood, and sat down 
 by a spring. She looked in it — her only mirror — at her wan 
 coarse face, Avith wild black elf locks hanging round it, and 
 wondered whether Alftruda, in her luxury and prosperity, was 
 still so very beautiful. Ah, that thsit fountain were the fountain 
 of Jouvence, the spring of jDerpetual youth, which all believed 
 in those days to exist somewhere, — how would she plunge into 
 it, and be young and fair once more ! 
 
 No ! she would not ! She had lived her life, and lived it well, 
 gallantly, lovingly, heroically. She had given that man her 
 youth, her beauty, her wealtli, her wit. He should not have 
 them a second time. He had had his will of her. If he chose 
 to throw her away when lie had done with her, to prove himself 
 base at last, unworthy of all her care, her counsels, her training 
 ^dreadful thought ! To have lived to keep that man for her own, 
 and just when her work seemed done, to lose him ! No, there 
 was worse than that. To have lived that she might make that 
 man a jDerfect knight, and just when her work seemed done, to 
 see him lose himself. 
 
 And she wept till she could weep no more. Then she washed 
 away her tears in that well. Hacl it been in Greece of old, it 
 would have become a sacred well thenceforth, and Torfrida's 
 tears have changed into forget-me-nots, and fringed its marge 
 with azure evermore. 
 
 Then she went back, calm, all but cold : but determined not 
 to betray herself, let him do what he would. Perhaps it was all 
 a mistake, a fancy, At least she would not degrade him, and 
 herself, by showing suspicion. It would be dreadful, shameful 
 to herself, wickedly unjust to him, to accuse him were he 
 innocent after all. 
 
 Hereward, she remarked, was more kind to her now. But it 
 was a kindness which she did not like. It was shy, faltering, as 
 of a man guilty and ashamed ; and she repelled it as much as 
 she dared, and then, once or twice, returned it passionately, 
 
 madly, in hopes 
 
 But he never spoke a word of that letter. 
 After a dreadful month, Martin came mysteriously to her 
 again. She trembled, for she had remarked in him lately a 
 strange change. He had lost his usual loquacity and quaint 
 humour ; and had fallen back into that sullen taciturnity wliich, 
 so she heard, he had kept up in his youth. He, too, must know 
 evil which he dared not tell. 
 
 ' There is another letter come. It came last night,' said he. 
 'What is that to thee or me ? My lord has his state secrets. 
 Is it for us to pry into them ? Go.'
 
 XXXVI HOW ALFTRUDA WROTE TO HEREWARD 323 
 
 ' I thought— I thought ' 
 
 'Go, I say!' 
 
 'That your ladyship might wish for a guide to Crowland.' 
 
 ' Crowland 1 ' almost shrieked Torf rida, for the thought of 
 Crowland had risen in her own wretched mind instantly and 
 involuntarily. ' Go, madman ! ' 
 
 Martin went. Torfrida paced madly up and down the farm- 
 house. Then she settled herself into fierce despair. 
 
 There was a noise of trampling horses outside. The men 
 were arming and saddling, seemingly for a raid. 
 
 Hereward hurried in for his armour. When he saw Torfrida, 
 he blushed scarlet. 
 
 ' You want your arms,' said she quietly ; ' let me fetch 
 them.' 
 
 ' No, never mind. I can harness myself ; I am going south- 
 west, to pay Taillebois a visit. I am in a great hurry. I shall 
 be back in three days. Then — good-bye.' 
 
 He snatched his arms off a perch, and hurried out again, 
 dragging them on. As he passed her, he offered to kiss her ; 
 she put him back, and helped him on with his armour, 
 while he thanked her confusedly. 
 
 ' He was as glad not to kiss me, after all ! ' 
 
 She looked after him as he stood, his hand on his horse's 
 withers. How noble he looked ! And a great yearning came 
 over her. To throw her arms round his neck once, and then to 
 stab herself, and set him free, dying, as she had lived, for him. 
 
 Two bonny boys were wrestling on the lawn, young outlaws 
 who had grown up in the forest with ruddy cheeks and iron 
 limbs. 
 
 ' Ah, Winter ! ' — she heard him .say, ' had I had such a boy as 
 that ! ' 
 
 She heard no more She turned away, her heart dead within 
 her. She knew all that those words implied, in days when the 
 possession of land was everything to the free man ; and the 
 possession of a son necessary, to pass that land on in the 
 ancestral line. Only to have a son ; only to prevent the old 
 estate passing, with an heiress, into the hands of strangers, 
 what crimes did not men commit in those days, and find them- 
 selves excused for them in public opinion 1 And now, her other 
 children (if she ever had any) had died in childhood ; the little 
 Torfrida, named after herself, was all that she had brought to 
 Hereward ; and he was the last of his house. In him the race 
 of Leofric, of Godiva, of Earl Oslac, would become extinct ; and 
 that girl would marry — whom ? Whom but some French 
 conqueror, or at best some English outlaw. In either case 
 Hereward would have no descendants for whom it was worth 
 his while to labour or to fight. What wonder if he longed for a 
 son — and not a son of hers, the barren tree — to pass his name 
 down to future genei'ations ? It might be worth while, for that,
 
 324 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 to come in to the king, to recover his lands, to . Slie saw it 
 
 all now, and her heart was dead within her. 
 
 She spent that evening, neither eating nor drinking, but 
 sitting over her log embers, her head upon her hands, and 
 thinking over all her past life and love, since she saw him, from 
 the gable window, ride the first time into St. Omer. She went 
 through it all, with a certain stern delight in the self-torture, 
 deliberately day by day, year by year, — all its lofty aspirations, 
 all its blissful passages, all its deep disappointments, and found 
 in it — so she chose to fancy in the wilfulness of her misery, 
 notliing but cause for remorse. Self in all, vanity, and vexation 
 of spirit ; for herself she had loved him ; for herself she had 
 tried to raise liim ; for herself she had set her heart on man, and 
 not on God. She had sown the wind : and behold she had reaped 
 the whirlwind. She could not repent, she could not pray. But 
 oh ! that she could die. ^ 
 
 She was unjust to herself in her great nobleness. It was not 
 true, not half, not a tenth i^art true. But perhaps it was good 
 for her that it should seem true for that moment ; that slie 
 sliould be emptied of all earthly things for once, if so she might 
 be filled from above. 
 
 At last she went into the inner room to lie down and try to 
 sleep. At her feet, under the perch where Hereward's armour 
 had hung, lay an ojDen letter. 
 
 She picked it up, surprised at seeing such a thing there, and 
 kneeling down, held it eagerly to the wax candle which was on 
 a spike at the bed's head. 
 
 She knew the handwriting in a moment. It was Alftruda's. 
 
 This, then, was why Hereward had been so strangely hurried. 
 He must have had that letter and dropped it. 
 
 Her mind and eye took it all in in one instant, as the 
 lightning flash reveals a whole landscape. And then her mind 
 became as dark as tliat landscape when the flash is past. 
 
 It congratulated Hereward on having shaken himself free 
 from the fascinations of that sorceress. It said that all was 
 settled with King William. Hereward was to come to 
 Winchester. She had the king's writ for his safety ready to 
 send to him. The king would receive him as his liegeman. 
 Alftruda would receive him as her husband. Archbishop 
 Lanfranc had made difiiculties about the dissolution of the 
 marriage with Torfrida : but gold would do all things at Rome ; 
 and Lanfranc was her very good friend, and a reasonable man — 
 and so forth. 
 
 Men, and beasts likewise, when striken with a mortal wound, 
 will run, and run on, blindly, aimless, impelled by the mere 
 instinct of escape from intolerable agony. And so did Torfrida. 
 Half undrest as she was, she fled forth into the forest, she knew 
 not whither, running as one does wrapt in fire : but the fire was 
 not without her, but within.
 
 XXXVI HOW ALFTRUDA WROTE TO HEREWARD 325 
 
 She cast a passing glance at the girl who lay by her, sleeping 
 a pure and gentle sleep 
 
 ' Oh, that thou hadst but been a boy ! ' Then she thought no 
 more of her, not even of Here ward : but all of which she was 
 conscious was a breast and brain bursting ; an intolerable 
 choking, from which she must escape. 
 
 She ran, and ran on, for miles. She knew not whether the 
 night was light or dark, warm or cold. Her tender feet might 
 have been ancle deep in snow. The branches o\'er her head 
 might have been howling in the tempest, or dripping with rain. 
 She knew not, and heeded not. Tlie owls hooted to each other 
 under the staring moon, but she heard them not. The wolves 
 glared at her from the brakes, and slunk off appalled at the 
 white ghostly figure : but she saw them not. The deer stood at 
 gaze in the glades till she was close upon them, and then bounded 
 into the wood. She ran right at them, past them, heedless. 
 Slie had but one thought. To flee from the agony of a soul 
 alone in the universe with its own misery. 
 
 At last she was aware of a man close beside her. He had 
 been following her a long way, she recollected now : but she 
 had not feared him, even heeded him. But when he laid his 
 hand upon her arm she turned fiercely : but without dread. 
 
 She looked to see if it was Hereward. To meet liim would 
 be death. If it were not he she cared not who it was. It was 
 not Hereward ; and she cried angrily, ' Off ! Off ! ' and hurried 
 on. 
 
 ' But you are going the wrong way ! The wrong way ! ' said 
 the voice of Martin Lightfoot. 
 
 ' The wrong way ! Fool, which is the right way for me, save 
 the patli which leads to a land where all is forgotten ? ' 
 
 ' To Crowland ! To Crowland ! To the minster ! To_ the 
 monks ! That is the only right way for poor wretches in a 
 world like this. The Lady Godiva told you you must go to 
 Crowland. And now you are going. I too, I ran away from a 
 monastery when I was young ; and now I am going back. 
 Come along ! ' 
 
 ' You are right ! Crowland, Crowland ; and a nun's cell till 
 death. Which is the way, Martin V 
 
 ' Oh, a wise lady ! A reasonable lady ! But you will be cold 
 before you get thither. Tliere will l)e a frost ere moi-n. So 
 when I saw you run out, I caught uj) something to put over 
 you.' 
 
 Torfrida shuddered, as ^lartin Avrapt her in tlie white bear- 
 skin. 
 
 ' No ! Not that ! Anything but that ! ' and she struggled 
 to shake it off. 
 
 ' Then you will be dead ere dawn. Folks tliat run wild in 
 tlie forest thus, foi- but one night, die.' 
 
 ' Would God I could die ! '
 
 326 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' That shall be as He wills : you do not die while Martin can 
 keep you alive. Why, you are staggering already.' 
 
 Martin caught her up in his arms, threw her over his 
 shoulder as if she had been a child, and hurried on, in the 
 strength of madness. 
 
 At last he stopped at a cottage door, set her down upon the 
 turf, and knocked loudly. 
 
 ' Grimkel Tolison ! Grimkel, I say ! ' 
 
 And Martin burst the door open with his foot. 
 
 ' Give me a horse, on your life,' said he to the man inside. ' I 
 am Martin, The Wake's man, upon my master's business.' 
 
 * What is mine is The Wake's, God bless him,' said the man, 
 struggling into a garment, and hurrying out to the shed. 
 
 ' There is a ghost against the gate ! ' cried he, recoiling. 
 
 ' That is my matter, not yours. Get me a horse to put the 
 ghost upon.' 
 
 Torfrida lay against the gate-post, exhausted now : but quite 
 unable to think. Martin lifted her on to the beast, and led her 
 onward, holding her up again and again. 
 
 ' You are tired. You had run four miles before I could make 
 you hear me.' 
 
 ' Would I had run four thousand ! ' And she relapsed into 
 stupor. 
 
 They passed out of the forest, across open wolds, and at last 
 down to the river. Martin knew of a boat there. He lifted her 
 from the horse, turned him loose, put Torfrida into the boat, 
 and took the oars. 
 
 She looked up, and saw the roofs of Bourne shining white in 
 the moonlight. 
 
 And then she lifted up her voice, and shrieked three times, 
 ' Lost ! Lost ! Lost! ' 
 with such a dreadful ciy, that the starlings whirred up from 
 the reeds, and the wild fowl rose clanging off the meres, and the 
 watch-dogs in Bourne and Mainthorpe barked and howled, and 
 folk told feai'fully next morning, how a white ghost had gone 
 down from the forest to the fen, and wakened them with its 
 unearthly scream. 
 
 The sun was high when they came to Crowland minster. 
 Torfrida had neither si:>oken nor stirred ; and ]\Iartin, who in 
 the midst of his madness kept a strange courtesy and delicacy, 
 had never disturbed her, save to wi'ap the bear-skin more closely 
 over her. 
 
 When they came to the bank, she rose, stepped out witliout 
 his help, and drawing the bear-skin closely round her, and over 
 her head, walked straight up to tlie gate of the house of nuns. 
 
 All men wondered at the white ghost : but Martin walked 
 behind her, his left finger on his lips, his right hand grasping 
 his little axe, with such a stern and serious face, and so fierce an 
 eye, that all drew back in silence, and let her pass.
 
 XXXVI HOW ALFTRUDA WROTE TO HEREWARD 327 
 
 The portress looked thi"Ough the wicket. 
 
 ' I am Torfrida,' said a voice of terrible calm. ' I am come to 
 see the Lady Godiva. Let me in.' 
 
 The portress opened, utterly astounded. 
 
 ' Madam ! ' said Martin eagerly, as Torfrida entered. 
 
 ' What 1 What ? ' she seemed to waken from a dream. ' God 
 bless thee, thou good and faithful servant ; ' and she turned 
 again. 
 
 ' Madam ! Say ! ' 
 
 'What?' 
 
 ' Shall I go back, and kill him ? ' And he held out the little 
 axe. 
 
 Torfrida snatched it from his grasp with a shriek, and cast it 
 inside the convent door. 
 
 ' Mother Mary and all saints ! ' cried the portress, ' your gar- 
 ments are in rags, madam ! ' 
 
 'Never mind. Bring me garments of yours. I shall need 
 none other till I die ! ' and she walked in and on. 
 
 ' She is come to be a nun ! ' whispered the portress to the 
 next sister, and she again to the next ; and they all gabbled, 
 and lifted up their hands and eyes, and thanked all the saints of 
 the calendar, over the blessed and miraculous conversion of the 
 Lady Torfrida, and the wealth which she would probably bring 
 to the convent. 
 
 Torfrida went straight on, speaking to no one, not even to 
 the prioress ; and into Lady Godiva's chamber. 
 
 There she dropped at the countess' feet, and laid her head 
 upon her knees. 
 
 ' I am come, as you always told me I should do. But it has 
 been a long way hither, and I am very tired.' 
 
 ' My child ! What is this 1 What brings you here ? ' 
 
 ' I am doing penance for my sins.' 
 
 'And your feet all cut and bleeding.' 
 
 ' Are they 1 ' said Torfrida vacantly. ' I will tell you all about 
 it when I wake.' 
 
 And she fell fast asleep, with her head in Godiva's lap. 
 
 The countess did not speak or stir. She beckoned the good 
 prioress, who had followed Torfrida in, to go away. She saw 
 that something dreadful had happened ; and prayed as she 
 awaited the news. 
 
 Torfrida slept for a full hour. Then she awoke with a 
 start. 
 
 ' Where am I ? Here ward ! ' 
 
 Then followed a dreadful shriek, which made every nun in that 
 quiet house shudder, and thank God that she knew nothing of 
 those agonies of soul, whicli were the lot of the foolish virgins 
 who married and were given in marriage themselves, instead of 
 waiting with oil in their lamps for the true Bridegroom. 
 
 'I recollect all now,' said Torfrida. 'Listen ! ' And she told
 
 328 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 the countess all, with speech so calm and clear that Godiva was 
 awed by the power and spirit of that marvellous woman. 
 
 But she groaned in bitterness of soul. ' Anything but this. 
 Rather death from him than treachery. This last, worst woe 
 had God kept in His quiver for me most miserable of women. 
 And now his bolt lias fallen ! Hereward ! Hereward ! That 
 thy mother should wish her last child laid in liis grave ! ' 
 
 ' Not so,' said Torf rida, ' it is well as it is. How better 1 It 
 is his only chance for comfort, for lionoui', for life itself. He 
 
 would have grown a 1 was growing bad and foul myself in 
 
 that ugly wilderness. Now he will be a knight once more 
 among knights, and win liimself fresh honour in fresh fields. 
 Let him marry her. Why not 1 He can get a dispensation from 
 the pope, and then there will be no sin in it, you know. If the 
 Holy Father cannot make wrong right, who can ? Yes. It is 
 very well as it is. And I am very well where I am. Women ! 
 Bring me scissors, and one of your nun's dresses. I am come to 
 be a nun like you.' 
 
 Godiva would have stopped her. But Torfrida rose upon her 
 knees, and calmly made a solemn vow, which thougli canonically 
 void without her husband's consent, would, she well knew, never 
 be disputed by any there : and as for him, — ' He has lost me ; 
 and for ever. Torfrida never gives herself away twice.' 
 
 'There's carnal pride in those words, my poor child,' said 
 Godiva. 
 
 ' Cruel ! ' said she proudly. ' When I am sacrificing myself 
 utterly for him.' 
 
 ' And tliy poor girl 1 ' 
 
 ' He will let her come liither,' said Torfrida, with forced calm. 
 'He will see that it is not fit that she should grow up with — 
 yes, he will send her to me — to us. And I shall live for her — 
 and for you. If you will let me be your bower-woman, dress 
 you, serve you, read to you. You know that I am a pretty 
 scholar. You will let me, mother ? I may call you mother, may 
 I not 1 ' And Torfrida fondled the old woman's thin hands. 
 ' For I do want so much something to love.' 
 
 'Love thy heavenly Bridegroom, the only love worthy of 
 woman ! ' said Godiva, as her tears fell fast on Torfrida's head. 
 
 (She gave a half impatient toss. 
 
 ' That may come, in good time. As yet it is enough to do, if 
 I can keep down this devil here in my throat. Women, bring 
 me tlie scissors.' 
 
 And Torfrida cut off" her raven locks, now streaked with 
 gray ; and put on the nun's dress, and became a nun henceforth. 
 
 On tlie second day there came to Crowland Leofric the priest, 
 and with him the poor child. 
 
 She had woke in the morning and found no mother. Leofric 
 and the other men searched the woods round, far and wide. 
 The girl mounted her horse, and would go with them. Then
 
 XXXVI HOW ALFTRUDA WROTE TO HEREWARD 329 
 
 they took a bloodhound, and he led them to Grimkel's hut. 
 There they heard of Martin. The ghost must have been Tor- 
 fi'ida. Then the hound brought them to the river. And they 
 divined at once that she was gone to Crowland, to Godiva : but 
 why, they could not guess. 
 
 Then the girl insisted, prayed, at last commanded them to 
 take her to Crowland. And to Crowland they came. 
 
 Leofric left the girl at the nuns' house door, and went into 
 the monastery, where he had friends enow, runaway and rene- 
 gade as he was. As he came into the great court, whom should 
 he meet but Martin Lightfoot, in a lay brother's frock. 
 
 'Aha? And are you come home likewise? Have you re- 
 nounced the devil and this last work of his ? ' 
 
 ' What work ? What devil 1 ' asked Leofric, who saw method 
 in Martin's madness. 'And what do you here in a long 
 frock ? ' _ 
 
 ' Devil ? Hereward the devil. I would have killed him witli 
 my axe : but she got it from me, and threw it in among tlie 
 lioly sisters, and I liad work to get it again. 8hame on her, to 
 spoil my chance of heaven. For I should surely have won 
 heaven, you know, if 1 had killed the devil.' 
 
 After much beating about, Leofric got from Martin the whole 
 tragedy. 
 
 And when he heard it, he burst out weeping. 
 
 ' O Hereward, Hereward ! O knightly honour ! Oh, faith 
 and troth, and gratitude, and love in return for such love 
 as might have tamed lions and made tyrants mild ! Are they 
 all carnal vanities, works of the weak flesh, bruised reeds which 
 break when they are leaned upon 1 If so, you are right, Mar- 
 tin ; and there is nought left, but to flee from a world in which 
 all men are liars.' 
 
 And Leofric, in the midst of Crowland Yard, tore off his belt 
 and trusty sword, his hauberk and helm also, and letting down 
 his monk s frock, which he wore trussed to the mid-knee, he 
 went to the abbot's lodgings, and asked to see old Ulfketyl. 
 
 ' Bring him up,' said the good abbot, ' for he is a valiant man 
 and true, in spite of all his vanities ; and may be, he brings 
 news of Hereward, whom God forgive.' 
 
 And when Leofric came in, he fell upon his knees, bewailing 
 and confessing his sinful life ; and begged the abbot to take 
 him back again into Crowland minster, and lay upon him what 
 l)enance lie tliought fit, and put him in the lowest office because 
 he was a man of blood ; if only he might stay there, and have a 
 sight at times of his dear Lady Torfrida, without whom he 
 should surely die. 
 
 8o Leofric was received back, in full chapter, by abbot, and 
 prior, and all the monks. But when he asked them to lay a 
 penance upon liim, Ulfketyl arose from his high chair, and 
 sjaoke.
 
 330 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' Shall vre, who have sat here at ease, lay a penance on this 
 man, who has shed his blood in fifty valiant fights for us, and 
 for St. Guthlac, and for this English land ? Look at yon scars 
 upon his head and arms. He has had sharper discipline from 
 cold steel than we could give him here with rod ; and has fasted 
 in the wilderness more sorely, many a time, than we have fasted 
 here.' 
 
 And all the monks agreed that no penance should be laid on 
 Leofric. Only that he should abstain from singing vain and 
 carnal ballads, which turned the heads of the young brothers, 
 and made them dream of nought but battles, and giants, and 
 enchanters, and ladies' love. 
 
 Hereward came back on the third day, and found his wife 
 and daughter gone. His guilty conscience told liim in the first 
 instance why. For he went into the chamber, and there, upon 
 the floor, lay the letter which he had looked for in vain. 
 
 None had touched it where it lay. Perhaps no one had dared 
 to enter the chamber. If they had, they would not have dared 
 to_ meddle with writing which they could not read, and which 
 might contain some magic spell. Letters were very safe in 
 those old days. 
 
 There are moods of man which no one will dare to describe, 
 unless like Shakspeare, he is Shakspeare, and like Shakspeare 
 knows it not. 
 
 ^ Therefore what Hereward thought and felt will not be told. 
 What he did, was this. 
 
 He raged and blustered. He must hide his shame. He must 
 justify himself to his knights ; and much more to himself : or if 
 not justify himself, must shift some of the blame over to the 
 opposite side. So he raged and blustered. He had been robbed 
 of his wife and daughter. They had been cajoled away by the 
 monks of Crowland. What villains were those to rob an honest 
 man of his family while he was fighting for his country 1 
 
 So he rode down to the river, and there took two great 
 barges, and rowed away to Ci'owland, witli forty men-at-arms. 
 
 And all the while he thought of Alftruda, as he had seen her 
 at Peterborough. 
 
 And of no one else ? 
 
 Not so. For all the while he felt that he loved Torfrida's 
 little finger better than Alftruda's whole body, and soul into 
 the bargain. 
 
 What a long way it was to Crowland. How wearing were 
 the hours through mere and ea. How wearying the monoton- 
 ous pulse of the oars. If tobacco had been known then, Here- 
 ward would have smoked all the way, and been none the wiser, 
 thougli the happier, for it ; for the herb that drives away the 
 evil spirits of anxiety, drives away also the good, though stern, 
 spirits of remorse. 
 
 But in those days a man could only escape facts by drinking ;
 
 XXXVI HOW ALFTRUDA WROTE TO HEREWARD 331 
 
 and Hereward was too much afraid of what he should meet in 
 Crowland, to go thither drunk. 
 
 Sometimes he hoped that Torfrida might hold her purpose, 
 and set him free to follow his wicked will. All the lower nature 
 in him, so long crushed under, leapt up chuckling and grinning 
 and tumbling head over heels, and cried — Now I shall have a 
 holiday ! 
 
 Sometimes he hoped that Torfrida might come out to the 
 shore, and settle the matter in one moment, by a glance of her 
 great hawk's eyes. If she would but quell him by one look ; 
 leap on board, seize the helm, and assume without a word the 
 command of his men and him ; steer them back to Bourne, and 
 sit down beside him with a kiss, as if nothing had happened. If 
 she would but do that, and ignore tlie past, would lie not ignore 
 it ? Would he not forget Alftruda, and King William, and all 
 the world, and go up with lier into Sherwood, and then north to 
 Scotland and Gospatric, and be a man once more ? 
 
 No. He would go with her to the Baltic or the Mediter- 
 ranean. ConstantinoiDle and the Varangers would be the place 
 and the men. Ay, there to escape out of that charmed ring into 
 a new life. 
 
 No. He did not deserve such luck ; and he would not get it. 
 
 She would talk it all out. She must, for she was a woman. 
 She would blame, argue, say dreadful words — dreadful, because 
 true and deserved. Then she would grow angry, as women do 
 when they are most in the right, and say too much — still more 
 dreadful words, which would be untrue and undeserved. Then 
 he should resist, recriminate. He would not stand it. He 
 could not stand it. No. He could never face her again. 
 
 And yet if he had seen a man insult her — if he had seen her 
 at that moment in peril of the slightest danger, the slightest 
 bruise, he would have rushed forward like a madman, and died, 
 saving her from that bruise. And he knew that : and with the 
 strange self-contradiction of human nature, he soothed his own 
 conscience by the thought tliat he loved her still ; and that, 
 tlierefore — somehow or other, he cared not to make out how — he 
 had done her no wrong. Then he blustered again, for the benefit 
 of his men. He would teach these monks of Crowland a lesson. 
 He would burn the minster over tlieir heads. 
 
 'That would be pity, seeing they are the only Englishmen 
 left in England,' said Siward the White, his nephew, very 
 simply. 
 
 '\\hat is tliat to thee? Thou liast helped to burn Peter- 
 borough at my l)idding ; and thou shalt help to burn Crowland.' 
 
 ' I am a free gentleman of England ; and what I choose, I do. 
 I and my brother are going to Constantinople to join the Var- 
 anger guard, and shall not burn Crowland, or let any man 
 burn it.' 
 
 'Shall not let?'
 
 332 HEREAVARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 'No,' said the young man, so quietly that Hereward was 
 cowed. 
 
 ' I — I only meant — if tliey did not do right by me.' 
 
 ' Do right thyself,' said Siward. 
 
 Hereward swore awfully, and laid his hand on his sword-hilt. 
 But lie did not draw it ; for he thought he saw overhead a cloud 
 wliich was very like the figure of St. Guthlac in Crowland 
 window, and an awe fell upon him from above. 
 
 So they came to Crowland ; and Hereward landed and beat 
 upon the gates, and spoke high words. But the monks did not 
 open the gates for a while. At last the gates creaked, and 
 opened ; and in the gateway stood Abbot Ulfketyl in his robes 
 of state, and behind liim the prior, and all the officers, and all 
 the monks of the house. 
 
 ' Comes Hereward in peace or in war ? ' 
 
 ' In war ! ' said Hereward. 
 
 Then that true and trusty old man, who sealed his patriotism, 
 if not with his blood — for the very Normans had not the heart 
 to take that — still with long and bitter sorrows, lifted up his 
 liead, and said, like a valiant Dane, as his name bespoke him, 
 ' Against the traitor and the adulterer ' 
 
 ' I am neither,' roared Hereward. 
 
 'Thou wouklst be, if thou couldst. Whoso looketh upon a 
 woman to ' 
 
 'Preach me no sermons, man ! Let me in to seek my wife.' 
 
 'Over my l)ody,' said Ulfketyl, and laid himself down across 
 the threshold. 
 
 Hereward recoiled. If he had dared to step over that sacred 
 body, there was not a blood-stained ruffian in his crew who 
 dared to follow him. 
 
 ' Rise, rise ! for God's sake, lord abbot,' said he. ' Whatever 
 I am, I need not that you should disgrace me thus. Only let 
 me see her — reason with lier.' 
 
 ' She has vowed herself to God, and is none of thine hence- 
 forth.' 
 
 ' It is against the canons. A wrong and a robbery.' 
 
 Ulfketyl rose, grand as ever. 
 
 ' Hereward Leofricsson, our joy and our glory once. Hearken 
 to the old man who will soon go whither thine uncle Brand is 
 gone, and be free of Frenchmen, and of all this wicked world. 
 When the walls of Crowland dare not shelter the wronged 
 woman, fleeing from man's treason to God's faithfulness, then 
 let tlie roofs of Crowland burn till the flame reaches heaven, for 
 a sign tliat tlie children of God are as false as the children of 
 this world, and break their faith like any belted knight.' 
 
 Hereward was silenced. His men shrunk l:)ack from him. 
 He felt as if God, and the mother of God, and St. Guthlac, and 
 all tlie host of heaven, were slirinking back from him likewise. 
 He turned to supplications, compromises — what else was left.
 
 XXXVI HOW ALFTRUDA AVROTE TO HEREWARD 333 
 
 'At least you will let me have speech of her, or of my 
 mother ? ' 
 
 'They must answer that, not I.' 
 
 Hereward sent in, entreating to see one, or both. 
 
 ' Tell him,' said Lady Godiva, ' who calls himself my son, that 
 my sons were men of honour, and that he must have been 
 changed at nurse.' 
 
 ' Tell him,' said Torf rida, ' that I have lived my life, and am 
 dead. Dead. If he would see me, he will only see my corpse.' 
 
 ' You would not slay yourself ? ' 
 
 ' What is there that I dare not do ? You do not know Tor- 
 f rida. He does.' 
 
 And Hereward did ; and went back again like a man 
 stunned. 
 
 After a while there came by boat to Crowland all Torfrida's 
 wealth ; clothes, jewels : not a shred had Hereward kept. The 
 magic armour came with them. 
 
 Torfrida gave all to the abbey, there and then. Only the 
 armour she wrapped up in the white bear's skin, and sent it 
 back to Hereward, with her blessing, and entreaty not to refuse 
 that, her last bequest. 
 
 Hereward did not refuse, for very shame. But for very 
 shame he never wore that armour more. For very shame he 
 never slept again upon the white bear's skin, on which he and 
 his true love had lain so many a year. 
 
 And Torfrida turned herself utterly to serve the Lady Godiva, 
 and to teach and train her child as she had never done before, 
 while she had to love Hereward, and to work day and night 
 with her own fingers, for all his men. All pride, all fierceness, 
 all care of self, had passed away from her. In penitence, 
 liumility, obedience, and gentleness, she went on : never smiling, 
 but never weeping. Her heart was broken ; and she felt it 
 good for herself to let it break. 
 
 And Leofric the priest, and mad Martin Lightfoot, watched 
 like two dogs for her going out and coming in ; and when she 
 went among the old corrodiers, and nursed the sick, and taught 
 the cliildren, and went to and fro upon lier holy errands, bless- 
 ing and blessed, the two wild men liad a word from her mouth, 
 or a kiss of her hand, and were happy all the day after. For 
 they loved her with a love mightier than ever Hereward had 
 heaped upon her ; for she had given him all ; but she had given 
 those two wild men naught but the beatific vision of a noble 
 woman.
 
 334 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 HOW HEREWARD LOST SWORD BRAINBITER 
 
 ' On account of which,' says the chronicler, ' many troubles came 
 to Hereward : because Torfrida was most wise, and of great 
 counsel in need. For afterwards, as he himself confessed, things 
 went not so well with him as they did in her time.' 
 
 And the first thing that went ill was this. He was riding 
 through the Bruneswold, and behind him Gery, Wenoch, and 
 ]\latelgar, these three. And there met him in an open glade a 
 knight, the biggest man he had ever seen, on the biggest horse, 
 and five knights behind him. He was an Englishman, and not 
 a Frenchman, by his dress ; and Hereward spoke courteously 
 enough to him. But who he was, and what his business was in 
 the Bruneswold, Hereward thouglit that he had a right to ask. 
 
 ' Tell me who thou art who askest, before I tell thee who I 
 am who am asked, riding here on common land,' quoth the 
 knight, surlily enough. 
 
 ' I am Hereward, without whose leave no man has ridden the 
 Bruneswold for many a day.' 
 
 ' And I am Letwold the Englishman, who rides whither lie 
 will in merry England, without care for any Frenchman upon 
 earth.' 
 
 ' Frenchman 1 Why callest thou me Frenchman, man ? I am 
 Hereward.' 
 
 ' Then thou art, if tales be true, as French as Ivo Taillebois. 
 I hear that thou hast left thy true lady, like a fool and a churl, 
 and goest to London, or Winchester, or the nether pit — I care 
 not which — to make thy peace with the Mamzer.' 
 
 The man was a surly brute : but what he said was so true, 
 that Hereward's wrath arose. He had promised Torfrida many 
 a time never to quarrel with an Englishman, but to endure all 
 things. Now, out of very spite to Torfrida's counsel, because it 
 was Torfrida's, and he had promised to obey it, he took up the 
 quarrel. 
 
 ' If I am a fool and a churl, thou art a greater fool, to pro- 
 voke thine own deatli ; and a greater ' 
 
 ' Spare your breath,' said the big man, ' and let me try Here- 
 ward, as I have many another.' 
 
 Whereon they dropped their lance-points, and rode at each 
 other like two mad bulls. And, by the contagion of folly 
 common in the middle age, at each other rode Hereward's 
 three knights and Letwold's five. The two leaders found them- 
 selves both rolling on the ground ; jumped up, drew their 
 swords, and hewed away at each other. Gery unhorsed his man 
 at the first charge, and left him stunned. Then he turned on
 
 XXXVII HOW HEREWARD LOST SWORD BRAINBITER 335 
 
 another, and did the same by him. Wenoch and i\Iatelgar each 
 overthrew tlieir man. The fifth of Letwold's knights threw up 
 his lance-point, not liking his new company. Gery and the 
 other two rode in on the two chiefs, who were fighting hard, 
 each under shield. 
 
 ' Stand back ! ' roared Hereward, ' and give the knight fair 
 play ! When did any one of us want a man to help him 1 Kill 
 or die single has been our rule, and shall be.' 
 
 They threw up their lance-points, and stood round to see 
 that great fight. Letwold's knight rode in among theni, and 
 stood likewise ; and friend and foe looked on, as they might at 
 a pair of game cocks. 
 
 Hereward had, to his own surprise and that of his fellows, 
 met his match. The sparks flew, the iron clanged : but so 
 heavy were the stranger's strokes that Hereward reeled again 
 and again. So sure was the guard of his shield, that Hereward 
 could not wound him, hit where he would. At last he dealt a 
 furious blow on the stranger's head. 
 
 ' If that does not bring your master down ! ' quoth Gery. 
 ' By — — , Brainbiter is gone ! ' 
 
 It was too true. Sword Brainbiter's end was come. The 
 ogre's magic blade had snapt ofi" short by the hilt. 
 
 ' Your master is a true Englishman, by the hardness of liis 
 brains,' quoth Wenock, as the stranger, reeling for a moment, 
 lifted up his head, and stared at Hereward in the face, doubtful 
 what to do. 
 
 ' Will you yield,' or fight on 1 ' cried he. 
 
 ' Yield ? ' shouted Hereward, rushing upon him, as a mastiff 
 might on a lion, and striking at his lielm, though shorter than 
 him by a head and shoulders, such swift and terrible blows with 
 the broken hilt, as staggered the tall stranger. 
 
 ' What are you at, forgetting what you have at your side ? ' 
 roared Gery. 
 
 Hereward sprang back. He had, as was his custom, a second 
 sword on his right thigh. 
 
 ' I forget everything now,' said he to himself angrily. 
 
 And that was too true. But he drew the second sword, and 
 sprang at his man once more. 
 
 The stranger tried, according to the chronicler, who probably 
 liad it from one of tlie three bystanders, a blow which has cost 
 many a brave man liis life. He struck riglit down on Here- 
 ward's head. Hereward raised his shield, warding the stroke, 
 and threw in that coiip de jarret, which there is no guarding, 
 after tlie downright blow has been given. The stranger 
 dropped upon his wounded knee. 
 
 ' Yield,' cried Hereward in his turn. 
 
 'That is not my fashion.' And the stranger fought on upon 
 his stumps, like Witherington in Chevy Chase. 
 
 Hereward, mad with the sight of blood, struck at him four
 
 336 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 or five times. The stranger's guai'd was so quick that he could 
 not hit him, even on his knee. He hekl his liand, and drew 
 back, looking at his new rival. 
 
 ' What the murrain are we two fighting about ? ' said he, at 
 last. 
 
 ' I know not ; neither care,' said the other, with a grim 
 chuckle. ' But if any man will fight me, him I fight, ever since 
 I had beard to my chin.' 
 
 ' Thou art the best man that ever I faced.' 
 
 ' That is like enough.' 
 
 ' What wilt thou take, if I give thee thy life ? ' 
 
 ' My way on which I was going. For I turn back for no man 
 alive on land.' 
 
 ' Then thou hast not had enough of me ? ' 
 
 ' Not by another hour.' 
 
 ' Thou must be born of fiend, and not of man.' 
 
 ' Very like. It is a wise son knows his own father.' 
 
 Hereward burst out laughing. 
 
 ' Would to heaven I had had thee for my man this three years 
 since.' 
 
 ' Perhaps I would not have been thy man.' 
 
 ' Why not r 
 
 ' Because I have been my own man ever since I was born, 
 and am well content with myself for my master.' 
 
 ' Shall I bind up thy leg ? ' asked Hereward, having no more 
 to say, and not wishing to kill the man. 
 
 ' No. It will grow again, like a crab's claw.' 
 
 ' Thou art a fiend.' And Hereward turned away, sulky, and 
 half afraid. 
 
 ' Very like. No man knows what a devil he is, till he tries.' 
 
 'What dost mean 1 ' and Hereward turned angrily back. 
 
 ' Fiends we are all, till God's grace comes.' 
 
 ' Little grace has come to thee yet, by thy ungracious tongue.' 
 
 ' Rougli to men may be gracious to women.' 
 
 'What hast thou to do with women?' asked Hereward 
 fiercely. 
 
 ' I have a wife, and I love her.' 
 
 'Thou art not like to get back to her to-day.' 
 
 ' I fear not, with this paltry scratch. I had looked for a cut 
 from thee, would have saved me all fighting henceforth.' 
 
 ' What dost mean 1 ' asked Hereward with an oath. 
 
 ' That my wife is in heaven, and I would needs follow her.' 
 
 Hereward got on his horse, and rode away. Never could he 
 find out who that Sir Letwold was, or how he came into the 
 Bruneswold. All he knew was, that he never had had such a 
 fight since he wore beard ; and that he had lost sword Brain- 
 biter : from which his evil conscience augured that his luck had 
 turned, and that he should lose many things besides.
 
 xxxviii HOAV HEREWARD CAME m TO THE KIXG 337 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 HOW HEREWARD CAME IN TO THE KING 
 
 After these things Hereward summoned all his men, and set 
 before them the hopelessness of any further resistance, and the 
 promises of amnesty, lands, and honours which William had 
 offered him ; and jDersuaded them — and indeed he had good 
 arguments enough and to spare — that they should go and make 
 their peace with the king. 
 
 They were so accustomed to look up to his determination, 
 tliat when it gave way theirs gave way likewise. They were 
 so accustomed to trust his wisdom, that most of them yielded 
 at once to his arguments. 
 
 That the band should break up, all agreed. A few of the 
 more susi^icious, or moi-e desperate, said that they could never 
 trust the Frenchman ; that Hereward himself had warned them 
 again and again of his ti-eachery ; that he was now going to do 
 himself what he had laughed at Gospatric and the rest for 
 doing ; what had brought ruin on Edwin and Morcar ; what he 
 had again and again prophesied would bring ruin on Waltheof 
 himself ere all was over. 
 
 But Hereward was deaf to their arguments. He had said as 
 little to them as he could about Alftruda, for very shame : but 
 he was utterly besotted on lier. For her sake, he had deter- 
 mined to run his head blindly into the very snare of which he 
 had warned others. And he had seared — so he fancied — his 
 conscience. It was Torfrida's fault now, not his. If she left 
 liini — if she herself freed him of her own will — why, he was 
 free, and there was no more to be said about it. 
 
 And Hereward (says the chronicler) took Gwenoch, Gery, and 
 Matelgar, and rode south to the king. 
 
 Where were the two young Siwards 1 It is not said. Prob- 
 ably they, and a few desperadoes, followed the fashion of so 
 many Englisli in those sad days — when, as sings the Norse 
 scald, 
 
 ' Cold heart and bloody hand 
 Now rule English land,' 
 
 and took ship for Constantinople, and enlisted in the Varanger- 
 guard, and died full of years and honours, leaving fair-haired 
 children behind them, to become Varangers in their turn. 
 
 Be that as it may, Hereward rode south. But wlien he had 
 gotten a long way upon the road, a fancy (says the cln-onicler) 
 came over liim. He was not going in pomp and glory enough. 
 It seemed mean for tlie once great Hereward to sneak into Win- 
 chester with three knights. Perhaps it seemed not over safe for 
 the once great Hereward to travel with only three knights. So 
 
 Z II. T. w.
 
 338 -nEREAVARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 lie Avent back all the way to camp, and took (says the chronicler) 
 'forty most famous knights, all big and tall of stature, and splendid 
 — if from nothing else, from their looks and their harness alone.' 
 
 So Hereward and tliose forty knights rode down from Peter- 
 borough, along tlie lloman road. For the Roman roads were 
 then, and for centuries after, tlie only roads in this land _; and 
 our forefathers looked on them as the work of gods and giants, 
 and called them after the names of their old gods and heroes — 
 Irmen Street, Watling Street, and so forth. 
 
 And then, like true Englishmen, our own forefathers showed 
 their respect for the said divine works, not by copying them, 
 but by picking them to pieces to pave every man his own 
 courtyard. Be it so. The neglect of new roads, the destruction 
 of the old ones, was a natural evil consequence of local self- 
 government. A cheap price perhaps, after all, to pay for that 
 IDOwer of local self-government Avhich has kept England free 
 unto this day. 
 
 Be that as it may, down the Roman road Hereward went ; 
 past Alconbury Hill, of the old posting days ; past Hatfield, 
 then deep forest ; and so to St. Alban's, then deep forest like- 
 wise. And there they lodged in the minster; for the monks 
 thereof were good English, and sang masses daily for King 
 Harold's soul. And th'e next day they went south, by ways 
 which are not so clear. 
 
 Just outside St. Alban's— Verulamium of the Romans (the 
 ruins whereof were believed to be full of ghosts, demons, and 
 magic treasures)— tliey turned, at St. Stephen's, to tlie left, off" 
 the Roman road to London ; and by another Roman road struck 
 into the vast forest which ringed London round from north-east 
 to south-west. Following the upper waters of the Colne, which 
 ran through the woods on tlieir left, they came to Watford, and 
 then turned probably to Rickmansworth. No longer on the 
 lloman paved ways, they followed horse-tracks, between the 
 forest and the rich marsh-meadows of the Colne, as far as Den- 
 liam, and then struck into a Roman road again at the north end 
 of Langley Park. From thence, over heathy commons— for that 
 western part of Buckinghamshire, its soil being light and some 
 gravel, was little cultivated then, and hardly all cultivated now 
 — they held on straight by Langley town into the Vale of 
 Thames. 
 
 Little they dreamed, as they rode down by Ditton Green, oft" 
 the heathy commons, past the poor scattered farms, on to the 
 vast rushy meadows, while upon them was the dull weight of 
 disappointment, shame, all but despair ; their race enslaved, 
 their country a prey to strangers, and all its future, like their 
 own, a lurid blank — little they dreamed of what that vale would 
 be within eight hundred years — the eye of England, and it may 
 be of the world ; a spot which owns more wealth and peace, 
 more art and civilisation, more beauty and more virtue, it may
 
 XXXVIII HOW HEREWARD CAME IN TO THE KING 339 
 
 be, than any of the God's-gardens which make fair this earth. 
 Windsor, on its crowned steep, was to them but a new hunting- 
 palace of the old miracle-monger Edward, who had just ruined 
 England. Eunnymede, a mile below them down the broad 
 stream, was but a liorse-fen fringed with water-lilies, where the 
 men of Wessex had met of old to counsel, and to bring the 
 country to this pass. And as they crossed, by ford or ferry- 
 boat, the shallows of old Windsor, whither they had been tend- 
 ing all along, and struck into the moorlands of Wessex itself, 
 they were as men going into an unknown wilderness : behind 
 them ruin, and before them, unknown danger. 
 
 On through Windsor Forest, Edward the Saint's old hunting- 
 ground ; its bottoms choked with beech and oak, and birch and 
 alder scrub ; its upper lands vast flats of level heath : along the 
 great trackway which runs along the lower side oi Chobham 
 Camp, some quarter of a mile broad, every rut and trackway as 
 fresh at this day as when the ancient Briton, finding that his 
 neighbour's essedum — chariot, or rather cart — had worn the ruts 
 too deep, struck out a fresh wandering line for himself across 
 the dreary heath. 
 
 Over the Blackwater by Sandhurst, and along the flats of 
 Hartford Bridge, where the old furze-grown ruts show the 
 trackway to this day. Down into the clayland forests of the 
 Andredsweald, and up out of them again at Basing, on to the 
 clean crisp chalk turf ; to strike at Popham Lane the Eoman 
 road from Silchester, and hold it over the high downs, till they 
 saw far below them the royal city of Winchester. 
 
 Itchen, silver as they looked on her from above, but when they 
 came down to her, so clear that none could see where water 
 ended and where air began, hurried through the city in many a 
 stream. Beyond it rose the 'White Camp,' the 'Venta Bel- 
 garum,' the circular earthwork of white chalk on the high down. 
 Within the city rose the ancient minster church, built by Ethel- 
 wold — ancient even then — where slept the ancient kings ; Ken- 
 nulf, Egbert, and Ethelwulf, the Saxons ; and by them the 
 Danes, Canute the Great, and Hardicanute, his son, and 
 Norman Emma, his wife, and Ethelred's before him ; and the 
 great Eai'l Godwin, who seemed to Hereward to have died, not 
 twenty, but two hundred years ago ; — and it may be an old 
 Saxon hall upon the little isle whither Edgar had Indden bring 
 the heads of all the wolves in Wessex, where afterwards the 
 bishops built Wolvesey Palace. But nearer to them, on the 
 down which sloped up to the west, stood an uglier thing, which 
 they saw with curses deep and loud, — the keep of the new Nor- 
 man castle l)y the west gate. 
 
 Hereward lialted liis knights upon the down outside the 
 northern gate. Then he rode forward liimself. The gate was 
 open wide ; but lu; did not care to go in. 
 
 So he rode into the gateway, and smote ujion that gate with
 
 340 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 liis lance-lnitt. But tlie porter saw the knights upon the down, 
 and was afraid to come out ; for he feared treason. 
 
 Then Hereward smote a second time : but the porter did not 
 come out. 
 
 Then he took the lance by the shaft, and smote a third time. 
 And he smote so hard, that the lance-butt flew to flinders against 
 Winchester Gate. 
 
 And at that started out two knights, who had come down 
 from the castle, seeing the meinie on the down ; and asked : 
 
 ' Wlio art thou, who knockest here so bold ? ' 
 
 ' Who I am, any man can see by those splinters, if he knows 
 what men are left in England this day.' 
 
 The knights looked at the broken wood, and then at each 
 other. Who could the man be, who could beat an ash stave to 
 flinders at a single blow 1 
 
 ' You are young, and do not know me ; and no shame to you. 
 Go and tell William the king that Hereward is come to put his 
 hands between the king's, and be the king's man thenceforth.' 
 
 ' You are Hereward ? ' asked one, half awed, half disbelieving 
 at Hereward's short stature. 
 
 'You are — I know not who. Pick up those splinters, and 
 take them to King William ; and say, "The man who broke that 
 lance against the gate is here to make his peace with tliee," and 
 he will know who I am.' 
 
 And so cowed were tliese two knights with Hereward's royal 
 voice, and royal eye, and royal strength, that they went simply, 
 and did what he bade them. 
 
 And when King William saw the splinters, he was as joyful 
 as man could be, and said : 
 
 ' Send him to me, and tell liim, Bright shines the sun to me 
 that lights Hereward into Winchester.' 
 
 ' But, lord king, he has with liim a meinie of full forty knights.' 
 
 ' So much tlie better. I shall have the more valiant English- 
 men to help my valiant French.' 
 
 So Hereward rode round, outside the walls, to William's new 
 entrenched palace outside the west gate, by the castle. 
 
 And then Hereward went in, and knelt before the Norman, 
 and put his hands between William's hands, and swore to be his 
 man. 
 
 'I have kept my word,' said he, 'whicli 1 sent to thee at 
 Ilouen seven years agone. Thou art king of all England ; and 
 I am the last man to say so.' 
 
 'And since thou hast said it, I am king indeed. Come with 
 me, and dine ; and to-morrow I will see thy knights.' 
 
 And William walked out of the hall leaning on Hereward's 
 shoulder, at which all tlie Normans gnashed their teeth with envy. 
 
 'And for my knights, lord king? Thine and mine will mix, 
 for a while yet, like oil and water ; and I fear lest there be 
 murder done between them.'
 
 XXXIX TORFRIDA INSPIRED BY THE DEVIL 341 
 
 ' Likely enough.' 
 
 So the knights were bestowed in a ' vill ' near by ; ' and the 
 next day the venerable king himself went forth to see those 
 knights, and caused them to stand, and march before him, both 
 with arms and without. With whom being much delighted, he 
 praised them, congratulating them on their beauty and stature, 
 and saying that they must all be knights of fame in war.' After 
 which Hereward sent them all liome except two ; and waited 
 till he should marry Alftruda, and get back his heritage. 
 
 ' And when that happens,' said William, ' why should we not 
 liave two weddings, beausire, as well as one ? I hear that you 
 have in Crowland a fair daughter, and mari'iageable.' 
 
 Hereward bowed. 
 
 'And I have found a husband for her suitable to her years, 
 and who may conduce to your peace and serenity.' 
 
 Hereward bit his lip. To refuse was impossible in those 
 days. But 
 
 ' I trust that your grace has found a knight of higher lineage 
 than him, whom, after so many honours, you honoured with 
 the hand of my niece.' 
 
 William laughed. It was not his interest to quarrel with 
 Hereward. 'Aha! Ivo, the woodcutter's son. I ask your 
 pardon for that. Sir Hereward. Had you been my man then, as 
 you are now, it might have been difFei'ent.' 
 
 'If a king ask my pardon, I can only ask his in return.' 
 
 ' You must be friends with Taillebois. He is a brave knight, 
 and a wise warrior.' 
 
 'None ever doubted that.' 
 
 * And to cover any little blots in his scutcheon, I have made 
 him an earl, as I may make you some day.' 
 
 'Your majesty, like a true king, knows how to reward. Wlio 
 is this knight whom you have chosen for my lass ? ' 
 
 ' Sir Hugh of Evermue, a neighbour of yours, and a man of 
 blood and breeding.' 
 
 ' I know him, and his lineage ; and it is very well. I humbly 
 thank your majesty.' 
 
 ' Can I be the same man 1 ' said Hereward to himself bitterly. 
 
 And he was not the same man. He was besotted on Alftruda, 
 and humbled himself accordingly. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 HOW TORFRIDA CONFESSED THAT SHE HAD BEEN 
 INSPIRED BY THE DEVIL 
 
 After a few days there came down a priest to Crowland from 
 Winchester, and talked with Torfrida. 
 
 And she answered him, the priest said, so wisely and well,
 
 342 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 that he never liad met with a woman of so clear a brain, or of 
 so stout a heart. 
 
 At last, being puzzled to get that which he wanted, he touched 
 on the matter of her marriage with Hereward. 
 
 She wished it, he said, dissolved. She wished herself to enter 
 religion. 
 
 Tiie Church would be most happy to sanction so holy a desire, 
 but there were objections. She was a married woman ; and 
 her husband had not given his consent. 
 
 ' Let him give it, then.' 
 
 There were still objections. He had nothing to bring against 
 her which could justify the dissolution of "the holy bond: 
 unless 
 
 ' Unless I bring some myself ? ' 
 
 ' There have been rumours — I say not how true — of magic 
 and sorcery ' 
 
 Torfrida_ leapt up from her seat, and laughed such a laugh, 
 that the priest said in after years, it rung through his head as 
 if it had arisen out of the pit of the lost. 
 
 ' So that is what you want, churchman ? Then you sliall 
 have.it. Bring me pen and ink. I need not confess to you. 
 You shall read my confession when it is done. I am a better 
 scribe, mind you, than any clerk between here and Paris.' 
 
 She seized the pen and ink, and wrote ; not fiercely, as the 
 priest expected, but slowly and carefully. Then she gave it the 
 priest to read. 
 
 ' Will that do, churchman 1 Will that free my soul, and that 
 of your French archbishop?' 
 
 And the priest read to himself : 
 
 How Torfrida of St. Omer, born at Aries in Provence, con- 
 fessed that from her youth up she had been given to the practice 
 of diabolic arts, and had at divers times and places used the 
 same, both alone and with Richilda, late Countess of Hainault. 
 How, wickedly, wantonly, and instinct with a malignant spirit, 
 she had compassed, by charms and spells, to Avin the love of 
 Hereward. How she had ever since kept in bondage him, and 
 otiiers whom she had not loved with the same carnal love, Ijut 
 only desired to make them useful to her own desire of power 
 and glory, by the same magical arts ; for wliich she now humbly 
 begged pardon of Holy Church, and of all Christian folk ; and, 
 penetrated with compunction, desired only that she might retire 
 into the convent of Crowland. She asserted the marriage which 
 she had so unlawfully compassed to be null and void ; and 
 prayed to be released therefrom, as a burden to her conscience 
 and soul, that she might spend the rest of her life in penitence 
 for her many enormous sins. She submitted herself to the 
 judgment of Holy Church, only begging that this her free con- 
 fession might be counted in her favour, and that she might not 
 be put to death, as she deserved, nor immured perpetually;
 
 XXXIX TORFRIDA INSPIRED BY THE DEVIL 343 
 
 because her mother-in-law according to tlie flesh, the Countess 
 Godiva, being old and infirm, had daily need of lier ; and she 
 wished to serve her menially as long as she lived. After which, 
 she put herself utterly upon the judgment of the Church. And 
 meanwhile she desired and prayed that she might be allowed to 
 remain in perpetual imprisonment (wliereby her marriage could 
 be canonically dissolved) in the said monastery of Crowland, 
 not leaving the precincts thereof without special leave given 
 by the abbot and prioress in one case between her and them 
 reserved ; to wear garments of haircloth : to fast all the year 
 on bread and water ; and to be disciplined with rods or other- 
 wise, at such times as the prioress should command, and to such 
 degree as her body, softened with carnal luxury, could reason- 
 ably endure. And beyond — that, being dead to the world, God 
 miglit have mercy on her soul. 
 
 And she meant what she said. The madness of remorse and 
 disappointment, so common in the wild middle age, had come 
 over her ; and witli it the twin madness of self-torture. 
 
 The priest read, and trembled ; not for Torfrida, but for 
 Iiimself, lest she should enchant him after all. 
 
 ' She must have been an awful sinner,' said he to the monks 
 wlien he got safe out of the room ; ' comparable only to the 
 witch of Endor, or the woman Jezebel, of whom St. John writes 
 in the Eevelations.' 
 
 ' I do not know how you Frenchmen measure folks, when you 
 see them: but to our mind she is — for goodness, humility, 
 and patience, comparable only to an angel of God,' said Abbot 
 Ulfketyl. 
 
 ' You Englishmen will have to change your minds on many 
 points, if you mean to stay here.' 
 
 ' We sliall not change them, and we shall stay here,' quoth 
 the abbot. 
 
 ' How ? You will not get Sweyn and his Danes to help you a 
 second time.' 
 
 ' No, we shall all die, and give you your wills, and you will 
 not have the heart to cast our bones into the fens V 
 
 'Not unless you intend to work miracles, and set uj^ for 
 saints, like your Alphege and Edmund.' 
 
 ' Heaven forbid tliat we should compare ourselves with them ! 
 Only let us alone till we die.' 
 
 ' If you let us alone, and do not turn traitor meanwhile.' 
 
 Abbot Ulfketyl V)it his lip, and kept down the rising fiend. 
 
 'And now,' said the priest, 'deliver me over Torfrida the 
 younger, dauglitcr of Herewai-d and this woman, that I may 
 take her to the king, who has found a fit husband for her.' 
 
 'You will hardly get her.' 
 
 ' Not get her ? ' 
 
 ' Not without her mother's consent. The lass cares for nought 
 but her.'
 
 344 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' Pish ! that sorceress 1 Send for the girl.' 
 
 Abbot Ulfketyl, forced in his own abbey, great and august 
 lord thougli he was, to obey any upstart of a Norman priest who 
 came backed by the king and Lanfranc, sent for the lass. 
 
 The young outlaw came in — hawk on fist, and its hood oft", 
 for it was a pet — short, sturdy, upi-ight, brown-haired, blue- 
 eyed, ill-dressed, with liard hands and sunburnt face, but with 
 the hawk-eye of her father and her mother, and the hawks 
 among which she was bred. Slie looked the priest over from 
 liead to foot, till he was abashed. 
 
 ' A Frenchman ! ' said she, and she said no more. 
 
 The priest looked at her eyes, and tlien at the hawk's eyes. 
 They were disagreeably like each other. He told his errand as 
 courteously as he could, for he was not a bad-hearted man for a 
 Norman priest. 
 
 The lass laughed him to scorn. The king's commands 1 She 
 never saw a king in tlie greenwood, and cared for none. There 
 was no king in England now, since Sweyn Ulfsson sailed back 
 to Denmark. Who was this French William, to sell a free 
 Englisli lass like a colt or a cow 1 The priest might go back to 
 the slaves of Wessex, and command them if he could : but in 
 the fens men were free, and lasses too. 
 
 The priest was piously shocked and indignant, and began to 
 argue. 
 
 She played with her hawk instead of listening, and then was 
 marching out of the room. 
 
 ' Your mother,' said he, ' is a sorceress.' 
 
 ' You are a knave, or set on by knaves. You lie ; and you 
 know you lie.' And slie turned away again. 
 
 ' She has confessed it.' 
 
 'You have driven her mad between you, till she will confess 
 anything. I presume you threatened to burn her, as some of 
 you did a while back.' And the young lady made use of words 
 equally strong and true. 
 
 The jDriest was not accustomed to the direct language of the 
 greenwood, and indignant on his own account, threatened, and 
 finally oftered to use, force. Whereon there looked up into his 
 face such a demon (so he said) as he never had seen or dreamed 
 of, and said : 
 
 'If you lay a finger on me, I will brittle you like any deer.' 
 And therewith pulled out a saying-knife, about half as long 
 again as the said priest's liand, being very sharp, so he deposed, 
 down the whole length of one edge, and likewise down his little 
 finger's length of tlie other. 
 
 Not being versed in the terms of English venery, he asked 
 Abbot Ulfketyl what brittling of a deer might mean ; and being 
 informed that it was that operation on the carcase of a stag 
 which liis countrymen called eventrer, he subsided, and thought 
 it best to go and consult the young lady's motlier.
 
 XXXIX TORFRIDA INSPIRED BY THE DEVIL 345 
 
 She, to his astonishment, submitted at once and utterly. The 
 king, and he whom she had called her husband, were very gracious. 
 It was all well. She would have preferred, and the lady Godiva 
 too, after their experience of the world and the flesh, to have 
 devoted her daughter to heaven in the minster there. But she 
 was unworthy. Who was she, to train a bride for Him wlio 
 died on the cross 1 She accepted this as part of her penance, 
 with thankfulness and humility. She had heard that Sir Hugh 
 of Evermue was a gentleman of ancient birth and good prowess, 
 and she thanked the king for his choice. Let the priest tell her 
 daughter that she commanded her to go with him to Winchester. 
 She did not wish to see her. She was stained with many crimes, 
 and unworthy to approach a jDure maiden. Besides, it would 
 only cause misery and tears. She was trying to die to the 
 world and to the flesh ; and she did not wish to reawaken their 
 power within her. Yes. It was very well. Let the lass go 
 with him. 
 
 ' Thou art indeed a true penitent,' said tlie priest, his human 
 lieart softening him. 
 
 ' Thou art very much mistaken,' said she, and turned away. 
 
 The girl, when she heard her mother's command, wept, 
 shrieked, and went. At least she was going to her father. 
 And from wliolesome fear of that same saying-knife, the priest 
 left her in peace all the way to Winchester. 
 
 After which. Abbot L^lfketyl went into his lodgings, and 
 burst, like a noble old nobleman as he was, into bitter tears of 
 rage and shame. 
 
 But Torfrida's eyes were as dry as her own sackcloth. 
 
 The priest took the letter back, and showed it — it may be to 
 Archbishop Lanfranc, who was well versed in such matters, 
 having already (as is well known to all the world) arranged 
 King William's uncanonical marriage, by help of Archdeacon 
 Hildebrand, afterwards pojDe. But what he said, this chronicler 
 would not dare to say. For he was a very wise man, and a 
 very staunch and strong pillar of the holy Roman Church. 
 And doubtless he was man enough not to require that anything 
 should be added to Torfrida's penance ; and that would have 
 been enough to prove him a man in those days — at least for a 
 churchman — as it proved Arclibishop or Saint Ailred to be, a 
 few years after, in the case of tlie nun of Watton, to be read 
 in Gale's Scriptores AiirjlicanuB. Then he showed the letter to 
 Alftruda. 
 
 And she laughed one of her laughs, and said, ' I have her at 
 last ! ' 
 
 Then, as it befell, he was forced to show the letter to Queen 
 Matilda ; and she wept over it human tears, such as she, the 
 noble heart, had been forced to weep many a time before, and 
 said, ' The poor soul ! — You, Alftruda, woman ! does Hereward 
 know of this ? '
 
 346 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 ' No, madam,' said Alftruda, not adding that she had taken 
 good care that he should not know. 
 
 ' It is the best tiling which I have heard of him. I should tell 
 him, were it not that I must not meddle with my lord's jilans. 
 God grant him a good delivery, as they say of the poor souls in 
 gaol. Well, madam, you have your will at last. God give you 
 grace thereof, for you have not given him much chance as yet.' 
 
 'Your majesty will honour us by coming to the wedding?' 
 asked Alftruda, utterly unabashed. 
 
 Matilda the Good looked at her with a face of such calm 
 childlike astonishment, that Alftruda dropped her proud head 
 at last, and slunk out of the presence like a beaten cur. 
 
 But William went to the wedding ; and swore horrible oaths 
 that they were the handsomest pair he had ever seen. And so 
 Hereward married Alftruda. How Holy Church settled the 
 matter, is not said. But that Hereward married Alftruda, 
 under these very circumstances, may be considei'ed a ' historic 
 fact,' being vouched for both by Gaimar and by Richard of Ely. 
 And doubtless Holy Church contrived that it should happen 
 without sin, if it conduced to her own interest. 
 
 And little Torfrida — then aged, it seems, some sixteen years 
 — was married to Hugh of Evermue. She wept and struggled 
 as she was dragged into the church. 
 
 ' But I do not want to be married. I want to go back to my 
 mother.' 
 
 _' The diabolic instinct may have descended to her,' said the 
 priests, 'and attracts her to the sorceress. We had best 
 sjirinkle her with holy water.' 
 
 80 they sprinkled her with holy water, and used exorcisms. 
 Indeed, the case being an important one, and the personages of 
 rank, they brought out from their treasures the apron of a cer- 
 tain virgin saint, and jiut it round her neck, in hopes of driving 
 out the hereditary tiend. 
 
 ' If I am led with a halter I must needs go,' said she, with one 
 of her mother's own flashes of wit, and went. ' But, Lady Alf- 
 truda,' whispered she, halfway up the church, 'I never loved him.' 
 
 ' Behave yourself laefore the king, or I will whip you till the 
 blood runs.' 
 
 And so she would ; and no one would have wondered in those 
 days. 
 
 ' I will murder you, if you do. But I never even saw him.' 
 
 ' Little fool ! And what are you going through, but what I 
 went through before you ? ' 
 
 ' You to say that ? ' gnashed the girl, as another spark of her 
 mother s wit came out. ' And you gaining what ' 
 
 'What I waited for for fifteen years,' said Alftruda coolly. 
 ' If you have courage and cunning like me, to wait for fifteen 
 years, you too may have your will likewise.' 
 
 The pure child shuddered ; and was married to Hugh of
 
 XXXIX TORFEIDA INSPIRED BY THE DEVIL 347 
 
 Evermue, who was, according to them of Crowland, a good 
 friend to that monastery, and therefore, doubtless, a good man. 
 Once, says Avicked report, he offered to strike her, as was the 
 fashion in those chivah'ous days. Whereon slie turned upon 
 liim like a tigress, and bidding him remember that she was the 
 daughter of Hereward and Torfrida, gave him such a beating 
 that he, not wishing to draw sword upon her, surrendered at 
 discretion ; and they lived all their lives afterwards as happily 
 as most other married peojile in those times. 
 
 All this, however pleasant to Hereward, was not pleasant to 
 the French courtiers ; whereon, after the simple fashion of 
 those times, they looked about for one who would pick a quarrel 
 with Hereward and slay him in fair fight. But an Archibald 
 Bell-the-Cat was not to be found behind every hedge. 
 
 Still, he might be provoked to fight. If his foe was slain, 
 so much the worse for both parties. For a duel, especially if a 
 fatal one, within the precincts of the king's court, was a grave 
 offence, punishable, at least in extreme cases, with death. 
 
 Now it befell, that among them at Winchester was Oger the 
 Breton, he who had held ]\Iorcar's lands round Bourne, and who 
 was now in wrath and dread enough at the prospect of having 
 to give them up to Hereward. It was no difficult matter to set 
 the hot-headed Celt on to provoke the equally hot-headed 
 Wake ; and accordingly, Oger, having been duly plied with 
 wine, was advised to say one afternoon — 
 
 ' Hereward feeds well at the king's table. French cooking is 
 a pleasant change for an outlaw, who has fed for many a day 
 on rats and mice and such small deer.' 
 
 'A pleasanter change for a starveling Breton, who was often 
 glad enough ere he came to England, to rob his own ponies 
 of their furze-toppings, and boil them down for want of kale.' 
 
 'We use furze-toppings in Brittany to scourge saucy churls 
 withal. Speakest thou thus to me, who have the blood of King 
 Arthur and half his knights in my veins 1 ' 
 
 'Then discipline thine own churl's back therewith ; for churl 
 thou art, though thou comest of Arthur's blood. Nay, I will not 
 quarrel with thee. I have had too many gnats pestering me in 
 tlie fens already to care for one more here.' 
 
 Wherefrom the Breton judged that Hereward had no lust to 
 fight. 
 
 The next day he met Hereward going out to hunt, and was 
 confirmed in liis opinion when Hertnvard lifted his cap to him 
 most courteously, saying that he was not aware before that his 
 neighbour was a gentleman of such high lineage. 
 
 'Lineage? Better at least than thine, thou bare-legged 
 8axon, who hast dared to call me base-l)orn and starveling? 
 So thou must needs have thy throat cut ? I took thee for a 
 wiser man.' 
 
 ' Many have taken me for that which I am not. If you will
 
 348 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 harness yourself, I will do the same : and we will ride up to the 
 woods, and settle this matter in peace.' 
 
 ' Three men on each side to see fair play,' said the Breton. 
 
 And up to the woods they rode ; and fought long without 
 adv^antage on either side. 
 
 Hereward was not the man which he had been. His nerve 
 was gone, as well as his conscience ; and all the dash and fury 
 of his old onslaughts gone therewith. 
 
 He grew tired of the fight, not in body, but in mind ; and 
 more than once drew back. 
 
 'Let us stop this child's play,' said he, according to the 
 chronicler ; ' what need have we to tight here all day about 
 nothing 1 ' 
 
 Whereat the Breton fancied him already more than half- 
 beaten, and attacked more furiously than ever. He would be 
 the first man on earth who ever had had the better of the great 
 outlaw. He would win himself eternal glory, as the champion 
 of all England. 
 
 But he had mistaken his man, and his indomitable English 
 pluck. ' It was Hereward's fashion in fight and war,' says the 
 chronicler, 'always to ply the man most at the last.' And so 
 found the Breton ; for Hereward suddenly lost patience, and 
 rushing on him with one of his old shouts, hewed at him again 
 and again, as if his arm would never tire. 
 
 Oger gave back, would he or not. In a few moments his 
 sword-arm dropped to his side, cut half-through. 
 
 ' Have you had enough. Sir Tristram the younger ? ' quoth 
 Hereward, wiping his sword, and walking moodily away. 
 
 The fruit of which was this. That within twenty-four hours 
 Hereward was arrested on a charge of speaking evil of the 
 king, breaking his peace, compassing the death of his faithful 
 lieges, and various other wicked, traitorous, and diabolical acts. 
 
 He was to be sent to Bedford Castle, in the custody of Robert 
 Herepol, chatelain of Bedford, a reasonable and courteous man. 
 The king had spared his life, in consideration of his having first 
 submitted himself. 
 
 Hereward went like a man stunned, and spoke never a 
 word. Day after day he rode northward, unarmed for the first 
 time for many a year ; and for the first time in all his years, 
 with gyves on ancle and on wrist. This was the wages of his 
 sin. This was the faith of Frenchmen. He was not astonished, 
 hardly disappointed. Hatred of William, and worse, hatred of 
 himself, swept all the passions from his soul. Of Alftruda he 
 never thought for a moment. Indeed, he never thought steadily 
 of anything, was hardly conscious of anything, till he heard the 
 key turned on him in a room — not a small or doleful one — in 
 Bedford keep ; and found an iron shackle on his leg, fastened 
 to the stone bench on which he sat. 
 
 liobert of Herepol had meant to leave his prisoner loose.
 
 XXXIX TORFRIDA INSPIRED BY THE DEVIL 349 
 
 But there were those among his French guards who told him, 
 and with truth, that if he did so, no man's life would be safe ; 
 that to brain the gaoler with his own keys, and then twist out 
 of his bowels a line wherewith to let himself down from the top 
 of the castle, would be not only easy, but amusing, to the 
 famous ' Wake.' 
 
 So Robert consented to fetter him so far, but no farther ; and 
 begged his pardon again and again as he did it, pleading the 
 painful necessities of his office. 
 
 But Hereward heard him not. He sat in stupefied despair. 
 A great black cloud had covered all heaven and earth, and 
 entered into his brain through every sense ; till his mind, as he 
 said afterwards, was like hell with the fire gone out. 
 
 A gaoler came in, he knew not how long after, bringing a 
 good meal, and wine. He came cautiously toward the prisoner, 
 and when still beyond the length of his chain, set the food 
 down, and thrust it toward him with a stick, lest Hereward 
 should leap on him and wring his neck. 
 
 But Hereward never even saw him or tlie food. He sat there 
 all day, all night, and nearly all the next day, and hardly moved 
 liand or foot. The gaoler told Sir Robert in the evening that 
 he thought the man was mad, and would die. 
 
 So good Sir Robert went up to him, and spoke kindly and 
 hopefully. But all Hereward answered was, that he was very 
 well. That he wanted nothing. That he had always heard 
 well of Sir Robert. That he should like to get a Kttle sleep : but 
 that sleep would not come. 
 
 The next day Sir Robert came again early, and found him 
 sitting in the same place. 
 
 ' He was very well,' he said. ' How could he be otherwise ? 
 He was just where he ought to be. A man could not be better 
 than in his right place.' 
 
 Whereon Sir Robert gave him up for mad. 
 
 Then lie bethought of sending him a harp, knowing the fame 
 of Hereward's music and singing. 'And when he saw the harp,' 
 the gaoler said, ' he wept ; but bade take the tiling away. And 
 so sat still where he was.' 
 
 In this state of dull despair, he remained for many weeks. 
 At last he woke up. 
 
 There passed through and by Bedford large bodies of troops, 
 going as it w'ere to and from battle. The clank of arms stirred 
 Hereward's heart as of old, and he sent to Sir Robert to ask 
 what was toward. 
 
 Sir Robert, ' the venerable man,' came to him joyfully and at 
 once, glad to speak to an illustrious captive, wliom he looked 
 on as an injured person ; and told liim news enough. 
 
 Taillebois' warning about Ralph Guader and Waltheof had 
 not been needless. Ralph, as the most influential of the Bretons, 
 was on no good terms with the Normans, save with one, and that
 
 350 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 one of the most j^owevful— Fitz-Osbern, Earl of Hereford. His 
 sister, l\alpli was to have married : but William, for reasons un- 
 known, forbade tlie match. Tlie two great earls celebrated the 
 wedding in spite of William, and asked Waltheof as a guest, 
 And at Exning, between the fen and Newmarket Heath — 
 
 ' Was that bride-ale 
 Which was man's bale.' 
 
 For there was matured the plot which Ivo and others had long 
 seen brewing. William (they said) had made himself hateful to 
 all men by his cruelties and tyrannies ; and, indeed, his govern- 
 ment was growing more unrighteous day by day. Let them 
 drive him out of England, and part the land between them. 
 Two should be dukes, the tliird king paramount. 
 
 'Waltheof, I presume,' quoth Hereward, 'plotted drunk, and 
 repented sober, when too late. The wittol ! He should have 
 been a monk.' 
 
 'Repented he has, if ever he was guilty. For he fled to 
 Archbishop Lanfranc, and confessed to him so much, that 
 Lanf ranc declares him innocent, and has sent him on to William 
 in Normandy.' 
 
 ' O kind priest ! true priest ! To send his sheep into the 
 wolf's mouth.' 
 
 ' You forget, dear sire, that William is our king.' 
 
 'I can hardly forget that, with this pretty ring upon my 
 ancle. But after my experience of liow lie has kejjt faith with 
 me, what can I expect for Waltheof the wittol, save that which 
 I have foretold many a time ? ' 
 
 'As for you, dear sire, the king has been misinformed con- 
 cerning you. I have sent messengers to reason with him again 
 and again : but as long as Taillebois, Warrenne, and Robert 
 Malet had his ear, of what use were my poor words ? ' 
 
 'And what said they?' 
 
 ' That there would be no peace in England if you were 
 loose.' 
 
 ' They lied. I am no boy, like Waltheof. I know when the 
 game is played out. And it is played out now. The Frenchman 
 is master, and I know it well. Were I loose to-morrow, and as 
 great a fool as Waltheof, what could I do, with, it may be, some 
 forty knights, and a hundred men-at-arms, against all William's 
 armies ? But how goes on this fools' rebellion ? If I had been 
 loose, I might have helped to crush it in tlie bud.' 
 
 'And you would have done that against Waltheof?' 
 
 'Why not against him ? He is but bringing more misery on 
 England. Tell that to William. Tell him that if he sets me 
 free, I will be the first to attack Waltheof, or whom he will. 
 There are no English left to tight against,' said he bittei'ly, 
 ' for Waltheof is none now.' 
 
 'He shall know your words when he returns to England.'
 
 XXXIX TORFRIDA INSPIRED BY THE DEVIL 351 
 
 ' What, is he abroad, and all this evil going on ? ' 
 
 'In Normandy. But tiie English have risen for the king in 
 Herefordshire, and beaten Earl Koger ; and Odo of Bayeux and 
 Bishop Mowbray are on tlieir way to Cambridge, where they 
 hope to give a good account of Earl Ralph ; and hope, too, that 
 the English may help them there.' 
 
 ' And tiiey shall ! Tliey hate Ralph Guader as much as I do. 
 Can you send a message for me ? ' 
 
 • Whither ? ' 
 
 ' To Bourne in the Bruneswold ; and say to Hereward's men, 
 wherever they are, Let them rise and arm, if they love Here- 
 ward ; and go down to Cambridge, to be the foremost at Bishop 
 Odo's side against Ralph Guader, or Waltheof himself. Send ! 
 send ! Oh that I were free ! ' 
 
 'Would to heaven thou wert free, my gallant sir ! ' said the 
 good man. 
 
 From that day Hereward woke up somewhat. He was still 
 a broken man, querulous, peevish : but the hope of freedom and 
 the hope of battle stirred him. If lie could but get to his men ! 
 But his melancholy returned. His men — some of them at least 
 — went down to Odo at Cambridge, and did good service. 
 Guader was utterly routed, and escaped to Norwich, and 
 thence to Brittany, his home. The bishops punished their 
 prisoners, the rebel French, with hoi'rible mutilations. 
 
 'The wolves are beginning to eat each other,' said Hereward 
 to himself. But it was a sickening thought to him, that his 
 men had been fighting and he not at their head. 
 
 After a while tliere came to Bedford Castle two witty knaves. 
 One was a cook, who 'came to buy milk,' says the chronicler ; 
 the other seemingly a gleeman. They told stories, jested, 
 harped, sang, drank, and joleased much the garrison and Sir 
 Robert, who let them hang about tlie place. 
 
 They asked next, whether it were true that the famous Wake 
 was there? If so, might a man have a look at him ? 
 
 The gaoler said that many men might liave gone to see him, 
 so easy was Sir Robert to liim. But he would have no man ; 
 and none dare enter save Sir Robert and he, for fear of their 
 lives. But he would ask him of Herepol. 
 
 The good knight of Herepol said, ' Let the rogues go in, they 
 may amuse the poor soul.' 
 
 So they went in ; and as soon as they went, he knew them. 
 One was Martin Lightfoot, the other, Leofric his mass-priest. 
 
 'Who sent you?' asked he surlily, turning his face 
 away. 
 
 'She.' 
 
 'Who?' 
 
 ' We know but one she, and she is at Crowland.' 
 
 ' She sent you ? and wlierefore ? ' 
 
 'That we might sing to you, and make you merry.'
 
 352 nEREAVARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 Hereward answered them witli a terrible word, and turned 
 liis face to the wall, groaning, and then bade them sternly to go. 
 
 So they went, for the time. 
 
 The gaoler told this to Sir Eobert, who understood all, being 
 a kind-hearted man. 
 
 ' From his poor first wife, eh ? Well, there can be no harm 
 in that. Nor if they came from this Lady Alftruda either, for 
 that matter ; let them go in and out when they will.' 
 
 ' But they may be spies and traitors.' 
 
 'Then we can but hang them.' 
 
 Eobert of Herepol, it would appear from the chronicle, did 
 not much care whether they were spies or not. 
 
 So tlie men went to and fro ; and often sat with Hereward. 
 But he forbade them sternly to mention Torfrida's name. 
 
 Alftruda, meanwliile, returned to Bourne, and took possession 
 of her new husband's house and lands. She sent him again and 
 again messages of passionate love and sorrow : but he listened 
 to them as sullenly as he did to his two servants, and sent no 
 answer back. And so he sat more Aveary months, in the very 
 prison, it may be in tlie very room, in wliich John Bunyan sat 
 nigh six hundred years after : but in a very different frame of 
 mind. 
 
 One day Sir Robert was going up the stairs with another 
 knight, and met the two coming down. He was talking to that 
 knight earnestly, indignantly : and somehow, as he passed 
 Leofric and Martin he thought fit to raise his voice, as if in a 
 great wrath. 
 
 ' Sliame to all honour and chivalry ! Good saints in heaven, 
 what a thing is human fortune ! That this man, who had once 
 a gallant army at his back, should be at this moment going like 
 a sheep to the slaughter, to Buckingham Castle, at the mercy 
 of his worst enemy — of Ivo Taillebois, of all men in the world ! 
 If there were a dozen kniglits left of all those whom he used to 
 lieap with wealth and honour, worthy the name of knights, 
 they would catch us between here and Stratford, and make a 
 free man of their lord.' 
 
 So spake — or words to that effect, according to the Latin 
 chronicler, wlio must liave got them from Leofric himself — the 
 good knight of Herepol. 
 
 ' Hillo, knaves ! ' said he, seeing tlie two, ' are you here eaves- 
 dropping ? Out of the castle this instant, on your lives.' 
 
 Which hint tliose two witty knaves took on the spot. 
 
 A few days after, Hereward was travelling toward Bucking- 
 ham, chained upon a horse, with Sir Robert and his men, and a 
 goodly company of knights belonging to Ivo. Ivo, as the story 
 runs, seems to have arranged with Ralpli Pagnel at Bucking- 
 ham, to put him into the keeping of a creature of his own. And 
 how easy it was to put out a man's eyes, or starve him to death, 
 in a French keep, none knew better than Hereward.
 
 XL HOW EARL WALTHEOF AVAS MADE A SAINT 353 
 
 But he was past fear or sorrow. A dull heavy cloud of 
 despair had settled down upon his soul. Black with sin, his 
 heart could not pray. He had hardened himself against all 
 heaven and earth ; and thought, when he thought at all, only 
 of his wrongs : but never of his sins. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 HOW EAKL WALTHEOF WAS MADE A SAINT 
 
 A DAY or two after, there sat in Abbot Thorold's lodgings in 
 Peterborough a select company of Frenchmen, talking over 
 affairs of state after their supper. 
 
 'Well, lords and knights,' said the abbot, as he sipped his 
 wine, ' the cause of our good king, which is happily the cause 
 of Holy Church, goes well, I think. We have much to be 
 thankful for when we review the events of the past year. We 
 have finished the rebels ; Roger de Breteuil is safe in pi-ison, 
 Ralph Guader unsafe in Brittany, and Waltheof more than un- 
 safe in — the place to wliicli traitors descend. We have not a 
 manor left which is not in loyal hands ; we have not an English 
 monk left who has not been scourged and starved into holy 
 obedience ; not an English saint for whom any man cares a jot, 
 since Guerin de Lire preached down St. Adhelm, the admirable 
 primate disposed of St. Alphege's martyrdom, and some other 
 wise man — I am ashamed to say that I forget who — proved 
 that St. Edmund of Suffolk was merely a barbarian kinglet, 
 wlio was killed fighting with Danes only a little more heathen 
 tlian himself. We have had great labours and great sufferings 
 since we landed in this barbarous isle upon our holy errand ten 
 years since: but, under the- shadow of the Gonfalon of St. 
 Peter, we have conquered, and may sing " Dominus Illuminatio 
 mea," with humble and thankful hearts.' 
 
 ' I. don't know that,' said Ascelin, ' my lord uncle ; I shall 
 never sing " Dominus illuminatio," till I see your coffers illumi- 
 nated once more by those thirty thousand marks.' 
 
 'Or I,' said I\o Taillebois, 'till I see Hereward's head on 
 Bourne gable, where he stuck up those Frenchmen's heads seven 
 years ago, as his will be, within a week after he gets to Bucking- 
 ham Castle — where he should be by now. But what the lord 
 al)bot means by saying that we have done with Englisli saints 
 I do not see ; for the rogues of Crowland have just made a new 
 one for themselves.' 
 
 ' A new one 1 ' 
 
 'I tell you truth and fact; I will tell you all, lord abbot ; 
 
 and you sliall judge wliether it is not enough to drive an honest 
 
 man mad to see such tilings going on under his nose. Men say 
 
 of me that I am rough, and swear, and blaspheme. I put it to 
 
 2 A H. T. w.
 
 354 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 you, lord abbot, if Job would not have cursed if he had been 
 lord of Spalding. You know that the king let these Crowland 
 monks have Waltheof's body ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, I thought it an unwise act of grace. It would have 
 been wiser to leave him, as he intended, out on the bare down, 
 in ground unconsecrate : but what has happened ?' 
 
 'That old traitor, Ulfketyl, and his monks, bring the body to 
 Crowland, and bury it as if it had been the pope's. In a week 
 they begin to spread their lies — that Waltheof was innocent ; 
 that Archbishop Lanf ranc himself said so.' 
 
 ' That was the only act of human weakness which I have ever 
 known the venerable prelate commit,' said Tliorold. 
 
 ' That the burghers at Winchester were so deep in the traitor's 
 favour, that the king had to have him out and cut oft" his head 
 in the gray of the morning, ere folks were up and about ; that 
 the fellow was so holy that he passed all his time in prison in 
 weeping and praying, and said over the whole psalter every day, 
 because his mother had taught it hin^ — I wish she had taught him 
 to be an honest man — and that when his head was on the block 
 he said all the paternoster, as far as " Lead us not into tempta- 
 tion," and then oft' went his head ; whereon, his head being oft", 
 he finished the prayer with — you know best what comes next, 
 abbot?' _ 
 
 ' " Deliver us from evil. Amen ! " Wliat a manifest lie ! The 
 traitor was not permitted, it is plain, to ask for that which could 
 never be granted to him : but his soul, unworthy to be delivered 
 from evil, entered instead into evil, and howls for ever in 
 the pit.' 
 
 ' But all the rest may be true,' said one ; ' and yet that be no 
 reason why these monks should say it.' 
 
 'So I told them,' quoth Taillebois, 'and threatened them too ; 
 for, not content with making him a martyr, they are making 
 Iiim a saint.' 
 
 ' Impious ! Who can do that, save the Holy Father ? ' said 
 Thorold. 
 
 ' You had best get your bishop to look to them, then ; for 
 they are carrying blind beggars and mad girls by the dozen to 
 be cured at the man's tomb, that Ls all. Their fellows in the cell 
 at Spalding went about to take a girl that had fits off one of my 
 manors, to cure her ; but tliat I stopped with a good horse- 
 whip.' 
 
 'And rightly.' 
 
 'And gave the monks a piece of my mind ; and drove them 
 clean out of their cell home to Crowland.' 
 
 What a piece of Ivo's mind on this occasion might be, let 
 Ingulf describe — 
 
 'Against our monastery and all the people of Crowland he 
 was, by the instigation of the devil, raised to such an extreme 
 pitch of fury, that he would follow their animals in the marshes
 
 XL HOW EARL WALTHEOF WAS MADE A SAINT 355 
 
 with his dogs, drive them to a great distance down in the lakes, 
 mutilate some in the tails, otiiers in the ears, while often, by 
 breaking the backs and legs of the beasts of burden, he I'endered 
 tliem utterly useless. Against our cell also (at Spalding) and 
 our brethren, his neighbours, the prior and monks, who dwelt 
 all day within his presence, he raged with tyrannical and frantic 
 fury, lamed their oxen and horses, daily impounded their sheep 
 and poultry ; striking down, killing, and slaying their swine 
 and pigs ; while at the same time the servants of the prior were 
 oppressed in the earl's court with insupportable exactions, were 
 often assaulted in the highways with swords and staves, and 
 sometimes killed.' 
 
 At this moment there was a bustle outside. The door which 
 led from the hall was thrown open, and then rushed in, muddy 
 and gory, Oger the Breton. 
 
 ' Have a care for yourselves, lordlings ! The Wake is 
 loose ! ' 
 
 If the earth had opened between them, the party could not 
 have started more suddenly on their feet. 
 
 When their curses had lulled somewhat, Oger told his story 
 between great gulps of wine ; for he was nigh dead with hard 
 riding. 
 
 ' We were in a forest, midway betM'een Bedford and Bucking- 
 ham, when the rascals dashed out on us — Gwenoch and Winter, 
 and the rest, with that Ramsey monk and the Wake banner — I 
 know not how many there were. We had no time to form, or 
 even arm. Our helmets were hanging at our saddle-bows — it 
 was all over in a minute.' 
 
 ' Cleverly done ! ' shouted Ivo, in spite of his curses ; for lie 
 honestly loved deeds of arms, for him or against him. ' One 
 Wake makes many.' 
 
 'And that old traitor of Herepol refused to fight. We were 
 past his jurisdiction, he said. Your men. Lord Ivo, and Sir 
 Ralph's must guard the prisoner, if they would.' 
 
 ' He has been in league with The Wake all through.' 
 
 * That has he. For when The Wake was freed and armed, and 
 hewing away like a devilish dwarf as he is, he always bade spare 
 Sir Robert, crying tliat he was his friend and his saviour ; and 
 ere they parted the two villains shook hands lovingly, saying 
 aloud, how Sir Robert should ride post to tlie king, and give 
 him a good report of Hereward.' 
 
 The comments which followed this statement had best be 
 omitted, as they consisted wholly of French oaths. 
 
 'And how camest thou alive hither, of all men? 'asked the 
 abbot at last. 
 
 'How? I was smitten down at once, having no sword ai-ni 
 as you know. But The Wake, when he saw me down, bade 
 spare me. He would not slay me, lest the king should say he 
 did it for the sake of my lands. I should ride to you here at
 
 356 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 Peterborough, and carry this message to you all ; that whoso 
 wanted liis licad cut oii\ should come to him at Bourne.' 
 
 ' He lias promised to cut my head ott" long ago,' said Ascelin. 
 ' Earl, knights, and gentlemen, do you not think it wiser that 
 we sliould lay our wits together once and for all, and cut off 
 his?' 
 
 ' But who will catch The Wake sleeping ? ' said Ivo, laughing. 
 
 ' That will I. I have my plans, and my intelligencers.' 
 
 ' You your intelligencers ? ' 
 
 ' Nobles, there is nought suits so much my chivalrous humour, 
 as the consoling of distressed ladies. I may have visited the 
 fair Alftruda at Bourne ; I may have reminded her of certain 
 old pleasant jDassages between her and me.' 
 
 ' Which may end in thy going over thy hoi'se's croup, nephew ; 
 as thou didst about another dame of Hereward's.' 
 
 ' Uncle ? What would a singer of doughty deeds, and a doer 
 thei'eof beside, like you, have me do — especially when we both 
 have thirty tliousand marks to avenge — save dare again — per- 
 haps to win ? No, no. I lost that Torfrida : but I am grown 
 cunninger now ; and Alftruda is an easier game to fly at. I 
 may have said to her, for instance, that she had better have 
 chosen me ; and been answered by gentle wailings about who 
 should protect her in her loneliness : I may have offered to do 
 so myself, and been shrieked at with " Out traitor ! wretch ! " 
 and yet have visited Bourne again — in all honesty, mind you, 
 my lords. And I may have talked with a pretty bower-maiden, 
 and have said that tliough Abbot Thorold be poor, yet he has a 
 ring or two left, or an owch, or suchlike, wliich might be earned 
 by service due. And so forth. Wait for me, my good lords all ; 
 and I will not keep you waiting long.' 
 
 And so those wicked men took counsel together to slay 
 Hereward. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI 
 
 HOW HEREWARD BEGAN TO GET HIS SOUL'S PRICE 
 
 And now behold Hereward at home again, fat with the wages 
 of sin, and not knowing that they are death. 
 
 He is once more ' Dominus de Brunne cum ]\Iarisco,' lord of 
 Bourne with the fen, 'with all returns and liberties and all 
 other things adjacent to the same vill which are now held as 
 a barony from the lord king of England.' He has a fair young 
 wife, and with her farms and manors even richer than his own. 
 He is still young, hearty, wise by experience, high in the king's 
 favour, and deservedly so. 
 
 Why should he not begin life again ? 
 
 Why not ? Unless it be true that the wages of sin are, not a 
 new life, but death.
 
 XLi HOW HE BEGAN TO GET HIS SOUL'S PRICE 357 
 
 And yet he had his troubles. Hardly a French knight or baron 
 round but liad a blood-feud against him, for a kinsman slain. 
 Oger the Breton was not likely to forgive his wounded arm. 
 Sir Aswart, Thorold the abbot's man, was not likely to forgive 
 him for turning him out of the three ^lanthorpe manors, whicli 
 he had comfortably held for two years past, and sending him 
 back to lounge in tlie abbot's hall at Peterborough, without a 
 yard of land which he could call his own. Sir Ascelin was not 
 likely to forgive him for marrying Alftruda, whom lie had 
 intended to marry liimself. Ivo Taillebois was not likely to 
 forgive him for existing within a hundred miles of Spalding, 
 any more than the wolf would forgive the lamb for fouling the 
 water below him. Beside, had not he (Ivo) married Hereward's 
 niece 1 And what more grievous offence could Hereward commit, 
 than to be her uncle, reminding Ivo of his own low birth by his 
 nobility, and too likely to take Lucia's part, wheneA'er it should 
 please Ivo to beat or kick her? Only Gilbert of Ghent, 'the 
 pious and illustrious earl,' sent messages of congratulation and 
 friendship to Hereward, it being his custom to sail with the 
 wind, and worship the rising sun — till it should decline again. 
 
 But more ; hardly one of the Frenchmen round, but, in the 
 conceit of their skin-deep yesterday's civilisation, looked on 
 Hereward as a barbarian Englishman, who had his throat tat- 
 tooed, and wore a short coat, and preferred — the cliurl — to talk 
 English in his own hall, though he could talk as good French as 
 they when he was with them, beside three or four barbarian 
 tongues if he had need. 
 
 But more still : if they were not likely to bestow their love 
 on Hereward, Hereward was not likely to win love from them 
 of his own will. He was peevish and wrathful, often insolent 
 and quarrelsome : and small blame to him. The French were 
 invaders and tyrants, who had no business there, and would not 
 have been there, if he had had his way. And they and he could 
 no more amalgamate than fire and water. Moreover, he was a 
 very great man, or had been such once, and he thought liimself 
 one still. He had been accustomed to command men, whole 
 armies ; and he would no more treat these French as his equals 
 than they would treat him as such. His own son-in-law, Hugh 
 of Evcrmue, had to take hard words — thoroughly well-deserved, 
 it may be ; but all the more unj^leasant for that reason. 
 
 The truth was, that Hereward's heart was gnawed with sliame 
 and remorse ; and therefore he fancied, and not without reason, 
 that all men pointed at him the finger of scoi-n. 
 
 He had done a l)ad, base, accursed deed. And he knew it. 
 Once in his life — for his other sins were but the sins of his age — 
 the Father of men seems (if the chroniclers say truth) to have 
 put before this splendid barbarian good and evil, saying. Choose ! 
 And lie knew that the evil was evil, and chose it nevertheless. 
 
 Eight hundred years after, a far greater genius and greater
 
 358 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 general had the same choice — as far as liuman cases of conscience 
 can be alike — put before him. And he chose as Hereward 
 chose. 
 
 But as with Napoleon and Josephine, so it was with Here- 
 ward and Torfrida. Neither throve after. 
 
 It was not punished by miracle. What sin is 1 It worked 
 out its own punishment ; that which it merited, deserved, or 
 earned, by its own labour. No man could commit such a sin 
 without shaking his wliole character to the root. Hereward 
 tried to persuade himself that his was not shaken ; that he was 
 the same Hereward as ever. But he could not deceive himself 
 long. His conscience was evil. He was discontented with all 
 mankind, and with himself most of all. He tried to be good — as 
 good as he chose to be. If he had done wrong in one thing, he 
 might make up for it in others : but he could not. All his 
 higher instincts fell from him one by one. He did not like to 
 tliink of good and noble things ; he dared not think of them. 
 He felt, not at first, but as the months rolled on, that he was a 
 changed man ; that God had left liim. His old bad habits began 
 to return to him. Gradually he sank back more and more into 
 the very vices from wliich Torfrida had raised him sixteen years 
 before. He took to drinking again, to dull the malady of 
 thought ; he excused himself to himself ; he wished to forget 
 his defeats, his disappointment, the ruin of his country, the 
 splendid past which lay behind him like a dream. True : but 
 he wished to forget likewise Torfrida fasting and weeping in 
 Crowland. He could not bear tlie sight of Crowland tower on 
 the far green horizon, the sound of Crowland bells booming over 
 the flat on the south wind. He never rode down into tlie fens ; 
 he never went to see his daughter at Deeping, because Crow- 
 land lay that way. He went up into the old Bruneswold ; 
 hunted all day long through the glades where he and his merry 
 men had done tlieir doughty deeds ; and came home in the 
 evening to get drunk. 
 
 Tlien he lost his sleep. He sent down to Crowland to Leof ric 
 the priest, that lie might come to him, and sing him sagas of the 
 old lieroes, that he might get rest. But Leofric sent back for 
 answer, that he would not come. 
 
 That night Alftruda heard him by her side in the still hours, 
 weeping silently to himself. She caressed him : but he gave no 
 heed to her. 
 
 'I believe,' said she bitterly at last, 'that you love Torfrida 
 still better than you do me.' 
 
 And Hereward answered, like Mahomet in like case, ' That 
 do I, by heaven. She believed in me when no one else in the 
 world did.' 
 
 And the vain hard Alftruda answered angrily ; and there 
 was many a fierce quarrel between them after that. 
 
 With his love of drinking, his love of boasting came back.
 
 xij HOW HE BEGAN TO GET HIS SOUL'S PRICE 359 
 
 Because he could do no more gi*eat deeds — or rather had not the 
 spirit left in him to do more —he must needs, like a worn-out 
 old man, babble of the great deeds which he had done ^ insult 
 and defy his Norman neighbours ; often talk what might be 
 easily caricatured into treason against King William himself. 
 
 There were great excuses for his follies, as there are for those 
 of every beaten man : but Herewai'd was spent. He had lived 
 his life ; and had no more life which he could live ; for every 
 man, it would seem, brings into the world with him a certain 
 capacity, a certain amount of vital force, in body and in soul ; 
 and when that is used up, the man must sink down into some 
 sort of second cliildhood : and end, like Hereward, very much 
 where he began : unless the grace of God shall lift him up above 
 the capacity of the mere flesh, into a life literally new, ever- 
 renewing, ever-expanding, and eternal. 
 
 But the grace of God had gone away from Hereward, as it 
 goes away from all men who are unfaithful to their wives. 
 
 It was very pitiable. Let no man judge him. Life, to most, 
 is very hard work. There are those who endure to the end, and 
 are saved ; there are those, again, who do not endure : upon 
 whose souls may God have mercy. 
 
 So Hereward soon became as intolerable to his Norman 
 neighbours, as they were intolerable to him ; and he liad, for 
 his own safety, to keep up at Bourne the same watch and ward, 
 by day and night, as he had kept up in the forest. 
 
 In those days a messenger came riding post to Bourne. The 
 Countess Judith wished to visit the tomb of her late husband, 
 Earl Waltheof ; and asked hospitality on her road of Hereward 
 and Alftruda. 
 
 Of course she would come with a great train, and the trouble 
 and expense would be great. But the hospitality of those days, 
 when money was scarce, and wine scarcer still, was unbounded, 
 and a matter of course ; and Alftruda was overjoyed. No 
 doubt, Judith was the most unpopular person in England at 
 that moment ; called by all a traitress and a fiend. But she was 
 an old acquaintance of Alftruda's ; she was the king's niece ; 
 she was immensely rich, not only in manors of her own, but in 
 manors, as Domesday-book testifies, about Lincolnshire and the 
 counties round, wliich had l:)elonged to her murdered husband — 
 which she had too probably received as the price of her treason. 
 So Alftruda looked to her visit as to an honour which would 
 enable her to hold her head high among the proud French 
 dames, who despised her as the wife of an Englishman. 
 
 Hereward looked on the visit in a different light. He called 
 Judith ugly names, not undeserved ; and vowed that if she 
 entered his house by the front door he would go out at the back. 
 'Toi'frida prophesied,' he said, 'that she would betray her hus- 
 band, and she has done it.' 
 
 'Torfrida prophesied? Did she jorophesy that I should
 
 360 HEREWARD TltE WAKE chap. 
 
 betray you likewise ? ' asked Alf truda, in a tone of bitter 
 scorn. 
 
 ' No, you handsome fiend : will you do it 1 ' 
 
 'Yes ; I am a handsome fiend, am I not?' and she bridled up 
 her magnificent beauty, and stood over him as a snake stands 
 over a mouse. 
 
 ' Yes ; you are handsome — beautiful : I adore you.' 
 
 ' And yet you will not do what T wisli 1 ' 
 
 ' What you wish 1 What would I not do for you 1 what have 
 I not done for you ? ' 
 
 ' Then receive Judith. And now, go hunting, and bring me 
 in game. I want deer, roe, fowls ; anything and everything, 
 from the greatest to the smallest. Go and hunt.' 
 
 And Hereward trembled and went. 
 
 There are flowers whose scent is so luscious that silly children 
 will plunge their heads among them, drinking in their odour, 
 to the exclusion of all fresh air. On a sudden, sometimes, comes 
 a revulsion of the nerves. The delicious odour changes in a 
 moment to a disgusting one ; and the child cannot bear for years 
 after the scent which has once become intolerable by over- 
 sweetness. And so had it ]iai:)pened to Hereward. He did not 
 love Alftruda now ; he loathed, liated, dreaded her. And yet 
 he could not take his eyes for a moment ofi" her beauty. He 
 watched eveiy movement of her hand, to press it, obey it. Ho 
 would have preferred instead of hunting simply to sit and watcli 
 her go about the house at her work. He was spellbound to a 
 thing which he regarded with horror. 
 
 But he was told to go and hunt ; and he went, with all his men, 
 and sent home large supples for the larder. And as he lumted, 
 the free fresh air of the forest comforted him, the free forest 
 life came back to him, and he longed to be an outlaw once more, 
 and hunt on for ever. He would not go back yet, at least to 
 face that Judith. iSo he sent Imck the greater part of his men 
 with a story. He was ill : he was laid uj) at a farmhouse far 
 away in the forest, and begged the countess to excuse his 
 absence. He had sent fresh supplies of game, and a goodly com- 
 pany of his men, knights and liousecarles, who would escort her 
 royally to Crowland. 
 
 Judith cared little for his absence ; he was but an English 
 barbarian. Alftruda was half glad to have him out of the way, 
 lest his now sullen and uncei'tain temper shoidd break out ; and 
 bowed herself to the earth before Juditli, wlio patronised her to 
 her heart's content, and ofiered her slily insolent condolences on 
 being married to a barbarian. She herself could symiDathise — 
 who more? 
 
 Alftruda might have answered witli scorn that she was a 
 princess, and of better English blood tlian Judith's French 
 blood ; but slie had her ends to gain, and gained them. 
 
 For Judith was pleased to be so delighted with lier that she
 
 XLi HOW HE BEGAN TO GET HIS SOUL'S TRICE 361 
 
 Ivissed her lovingly, and said with much emotion that she re- 
 quired a friend who would suj^iDort her through her coming 
 trial ; and who better than one who herself had suflered so 
 much ? Would she accompany her to Crowland ? 
 
 Alftruda was overjoyed, and away they went. 
 
 And to Crowland tliey came ; and to the tomb in the minster, 
 whereof men were saying already that the saci'ed corpse within 
 worked miracles of healing. 
 
 And Judith, habited in widow's weeds, approached the tomb, 
 and laid on it, as a peace-oftering to the soul of the dead, a 
 splendid pall of silk and gold. 
 
 A fierce blast came liowling off the fen, screeched through the 
 minster towers, swept along the dark aisles ; and then, so say 
 tlie chroniclers, caught up the pall from off the tomb, and hurled 
 it far away into a corner. 
 
 ' A miracle ! ' cried all the monks at once ; and honestly 
 enough, like true Englislnnen as they were. 
 
 ' The holy saint refuses the gift, countess,' said old Ulfketyl, 
 in a voice of awe. 
 
 Judith covered lier face with her hands, turned away 
 trembling, and walked out ; while all looked upon her as a 
 thing accursed. 
 
 Of her subsequent life, her folly, her wantonness, her disgrace, 
 her poverty, her wanderings, her wretclied death, let others tell. 
 
 But these Normans believed that the curse of heaven was 
 upon her from that day. And the best of them believed like- 
 wise that Waltheof's murder was the reason tliat William, her 
 uncle, prospered no more in life. 
 
 'Ah, saucy sir,' said Alftruda to Ulfketyl, as she went out. 
 'There is one waiting at Peterborough now who will teach thee 
 manners ; Ingulf of Fontenelle, abbot in thy room.' 
 
 ' Does Hereward know that ? ' asked Ulfketyl, looking keenly 
 at her. 
 
 'Wliatisthat to tliee?' said she fiercely; and flung out of 
 tlie minster. But Hereward did not know. There were many 
 things abroad of wliich she told him notliing. 
 
 They went back, and wei-e landed at Deeping town, and 
 making their way along_ the King Street to Bourne. Thereon 
 a man met tliem running. Tliey had best stay where they 
 were. The Frenclnnen were out, and there was fighting up in 
 liourne. 
 
 Alftruda's knights wanted to j^ush on, to see after the Bourne 
 folk ; Juditli's kniglits wanted to pusli on to help the French : 
 and the two parties were ready to fight each other. Tliere was 
 a great tumult. Tlie ladies had mucli ado to still it. 
 
 Alftruda said that it might be ])ut a counti-yman's rumour ; 
 tliat, at least, it was siiamo to ciuarrel with their guests. At 
 last it was agreed tliat two knights should gallop on into Bourne, 
 and bring back news.
 
 362 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 But those knights never came back. So the whole body 
 moved on Bourne, and there they found out the news for 
 themselves. 
 
 Hereward had gone home as soon as they had departed, and 
 sat down to eat and drink. His manner was sad and strange. 
 He drank much at the mid-day meal, and then lay down to sleep, 
 setting guards as usual. 
 
 After a wliile he leapt up with a shriek and shudder. 
 
 They ran to him, asking whether he was ill. 
 
 ' 111 ? No. Yes. Ill at heart. I have had a dream — an ugly 
 dream. I thought that all the men I ever slew on earth came 
 to me witli their wounds all gaping, and cried at me, " Our luck 
 then, thy luck now." Chaplain ! Is there not a verse some- 
 where — uncle Brand said it to me on his deathbed — "Whoso 
 sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed " ? ' 
 
 ' Surely the master is fey,' whispered Gwenoch in fear to the 
 chaplain. 'Answer him out of Scripture.' 
 
 ' Text ? None such that I know of,' quoth priest Ailward, a 
 graceless fellow, who had taken Leofric's place. 'If that were 
 the law, it would be but few honest men that would die in their 
 beds. Let us drink, and drive girls' fancies out of our heads.' 
 
 So they drank again ; and Hereward fell asleep once more. 
 
 'It is thy turn to watch, priest,' said Winter to Ailward. 
 ' So keep the door well, for I am worn out with hunting,' and 
 so fell asleep. 
 
 Ailward sliuffled into his harness, and went to the door. 
 The wine was heady ; the sun was hot. In a few minutes he 
 was asleep likewise. 
 
 Hereward slept, who can tell how long ? But at last there 
 was a bustle, a heavy fall ; and waking with a start, he sprang 
 up. He saw Ailward lying dead across the door, and above 
 him a crowd of fierce faces, some of which he knew too well. 
 He saw Ivo Taillebois ; he saw Oger ; he saw his fellow-Breton, 
 Sir Raoul de Dol ; he saw Sir Ascelin ; he saw Sir Aswart, 
 Thorold's man ; he saw Sir Hugh of Evermue, his own son-in- 
 law ; and with them he saw, oi- seemed to see, the ogre of 
 Cornwall, and Feargus of Ivark, and Dirk Hammerhand of 
 Walcheren, and many another old foe long underground ; and 
 in his ear rang the text — ' Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man 
 shall his blood be shed.' And Hereward knew that his end was 
 come. 
 
 There was no time to put on mail or helmet. He saw sword 
 and shield hang on a perch, and tore them down. As he girded 
 the sword on, Winter sjDrang to his side. 
 
 'I liave three lances — two for me and one for you, and we 
 can hold the door against twenty.' 
 
 'Till they fire the house over our heads. Shall Hereward die 
 like a wolf in a cave ? Forward, all The Wake men ! A Wake ! 
 A Wake ! '
 
 XLi HOW HE BEGAN TO GET HIS SOUL S PRICE 363 
 
 And he rushed out uioon his fate. Xo man followed liim, 
 save Winter. The rest, dispersed, unarmed, were running 
 liither and thither lieljilessly. 
 
 ' Brotliers in arms, and brothers in Valhalla ! ' shouted 
 Winter as he rushed after him. 
 
 A knight was running to and fro in the court, shouting 
 Hereward's name. ' Where is the villain ? Wake ! We have 
 caught thee asleep at last.' 
 
 'I am out,' quoth Hereward, as the man almost stumbled 
 against him ; 'and this is in.' 
 
 And tin'ougli shield, and hauberk, and body, as says Gaimar, 
 went Hereward's javelin, wliile all drew back, confounded for 
 the moment at that mighty stroke. 
 
 ' Felons ! ' shouted Hereward, ' your king has given me his 
 truce ; and do you dare break my house, and kill my folk ? Is 
 that your French law ? And is this your French honour 1 — To 
 take a man unawares over his meat? Come on, traitors all, 
 and get what you can of a naked man ; ^ you will buy it dear — 
 Guard my back. Winter ! ' 
 
 And he ran I'ight at the press of knights ; and the fight 
 began. 
 
 ' He gored them like a wood wild boar, 
 As long as that lauce might endure,' 
 
 says Gaimar. 
 
 ' And when that lance did break in hand, 
 Full fell enougli he smote witli brand. ' 
 
 And as he hewed on silently, with grinding teeth, and hard, 
 glittering eyes, of wliom did he tliink '( Of Alftruda ? 
 
 Not so. But of that pale ghost, with great black hollow eyes, 
 who sat in Crowland, with thin bare feet, and sackcloth on her 
 tender limbs, watching, praying, longing, loving, uncomplain- 
 ing. That ghost liad been for many a month the background 
 of all his thoughts and dreams. It was so clear before his 
 mind's eye now, that unawares to himself, he shouted 
 ' Torf rida ! ' as he struck, and struck the harder at the sound 
 of his old battle-cry. 
 
 And now lie is all wounded and be-bled ; and Winter, who 
 has fought back to back with him, has fallen on his face ; and 
 Hereward stands alone, turning from side to side, as he sweeps 
 his sword right and left till the forest rings with the blows, but 
 staggering as he turns. Within a ring of eleven corpses he 
 stands. Who will go in and make tlie twelfth ? 
 
 A knight rushes in, to fall headlong down, cloven through 
 the helm : but Herewai'd's blade snaps short, and lie hurls it 
 away as his foes rush in with a shout of joy. He tears his 
 shield from his left arm, and with it, says Gaimar, brains two 
 more. 
 
 ^ I.e. without armour.
 
 364 HEREAVARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 But tlie end is come. Taillebois and Evermue are behind 
 liim now ; four lances are tln-ough his back, and bear him down 
 upon his knees. 
 
 'Cut off his liead, Breton!' sliouted Ivo. Raoul de Dol 
 rushed forward, sword in liand. At tliat cry Hereward lifted 
 up his dying head. One stroke more ere it was all done for 
 ever. 
 
 And with a shout of ' Torfrida ! ' whicli made the Bruneswold 
 ring, he hui'led the shield full in the Breton's face, and fell 
 forward dead. 
 
 The knights drew their lances from that terrible corpse 
 slowly and with caution, as men who have felled a bear-, and 
 yet dare not step within reach of tlie seemingly lifeless 
 paw. 
 
 ' The dog died hard,' said Ivo. ' Lucky for us that Sir Ascelin 
 had news of his knights being gone to Crowland. If he had 
 had them to back him, we had not done this deed to-day.' 
 
 ' I must keep my word witli him,' said Ascelin, as he struck 
 off the once fair and golden liead. 
 
 ' Ho, Breton,' cried Ivo, ' the villain is dead. Get up, man, 
 and see for yourself. What ails him V 
 
 But when they lifted up llaoul de Dol his brains were 
 running down his face ; and all men stood astonished at that 
 last miglity stroke. 
 
 ' That blow,' said Ascelin, ' will be sung hereafter by minstrel 
 and maiden as the last blow of the last Englishman. Kniglits, 
 we have slain a better knight than ourselves. If there had 
 been three more such men in this realm, they would have 
 driven us and King William back again into the sea.' 
 
 So said Ascelin ; those words of his, too, were sung by many 
 a jongleur, Norman as well as English, in the times that were 
 to come. 
 
 'Likely enough,' said Ivo; 'but that is the more reason 
 why we should set that liead of his up over the hall-door, as a 
 warning to these English cliurls that their last man is dead, 
 and their last stake thrown and lost.' 
 
 So perished ' The last of the English.' 
 
 It was the third day. Tlie French were drinking in the hall 
 of Bourne, advising Ascelin, with coarse jests, to lose no time 
 in espousing the fair Alftruda, who sat weeping witliin over 
 the headless corpse ; when in the afternoon a servant came in, 
 and told tliem how a barge full of monks had come to tlie shore, 
 and that they seemed to be monks from Crowland. Ivo 
 Taillebois bade drive them back again into tlie barge with 
 whips. But Hugh of Evermue spoke up. 
 
 ' I am lord and master in Bourne this day ; and if Ivo have a 
 quarrel against St. Guthlac, I have none. This Ingulf of 
 Fontenelle, the new abbot who has come thitlier since old 
 Ulfketyl was sent to prison, is a loyal man, and a friend of
 
 XLi HOW HE BEGAN TO GET HIS SOUL'S TRICE 365 
 
 King William's ; and my friend he shall be till he behaves 
 himself as my foe. Let them come up in peace.' 
 
 Taillebois gi'owled and cursed ; Ijut the monks came up, and 
 into the hall ; and at their head Ingulf himself, to receive "whom 
 all men rose, save Taillebois. 
 
 'I come,' said Ingulf, in most courtly French, 'noble knights, 
 to ask a boon in the name of the Most Merciful, on behalf of a 
 noble and unhajipy lady. Let it be enough to have avenged 
 yourself on the living. Gentlemen and Christians war not 
 against the dead.' 
 
 'No, no, master abbot!' shouted Taillebois; 'Waltheof is 
 enough to keep Crowland in miracles for the present. You 
 shall not make a martyr of another Saxon churl. He wants 
 the barbarian's body, knights, and you will be fools if you let 
 him have it.' 
 
 ' Churl 1 Barbarian ? ' said a haughty voice ; and a nun 
 stepped forward who had stood just behind Ingulf. She was 
 clothed entirely in black. Her bare feet were bleeding from 
 the stones : her hand, as she lifted it, was as thin as a 
 skeleton's. 
 
 She threw back lier veil, and showed to the knights what had 
 been once the famous beauty of Torfi'ida. 
 
 But the beauty was long passed away. Her hair was white 
 as snow ; lier cheeks were fallen in. Her hawk-like features 
 were all sharp and hard. Only in their hollow sockets burned 
 still the great black eyes, so fiercely that all men turned un- 
 easily from her gaze. 
 
 ' Churl ? Barbarian 1 ' she said slowly and quietly, but with 
 an intensity which was more terrible than rage. ' Who gives 
 such names to one who v/as as much better born and better 
 bred than they who now sit here, as he was braver and more 
 terrible than they 1 The base woodcutter's son 1 — The upstart 
 who would have been honoured had he taken service as yon 
 dead man's groom ? ' 
 
 'Talk to me so, and my stirrup leathers shall make acquaint- 
 ance with your sides,' said Taillebois. 
 
 'Keep them for your wife. Churl? Barbarian? There is 
 not a man within this liall who is not a barbarian compared 
 with him. Which of you touched the harp like him ? Which 
 of you, like him, could move all hearts with song? Which of 
 you knows all tongues from Lapland to Provence ? Which of 
 you has been the joy of ladies' bowers, the counsellor of earls 
 and heroes, the rival of a mighty king ? Which of you will 
 compare yourself with him — whom you dared not even strike, 
 you and your robl^er crew, fairly in front, but skulked round 
 liim till lie fell pecked to death by you, as Lapland Skratlings 
 peck to death the bear ? Ten years ago he swept this hall of 
 such as you, and hung their heads upon yon g;il)lp outside ; and 
 were he alive but one five minutes, tliis hall Asould be right
 
 366 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 cleanly swept again ! Give me his body — or bear for ever the 
 name of cowards, and Torfrida's curse.' 
 
 Slie fixed her terrible eyes first on one, and then on another, 
 calling them bj^ name. 
 
 ' Ivo Taillebois — basest of all ' 
 
 ' Take tlie witch's accursed eyes off me ! ' and he covered his 
 face with his liands. 'I sliall be overlooked — planet-struck. 
 Hew the witch down ! Take her away ! ' 
 
 ' Hugh of Evermue — The dead man's daughter is yours, and 
 the dead man's lands. Are not tliese remembrances enough 
 of him ? Are you so fond of his memory that you need his 
 corpse likewise 'I ' 
 
 ' Give it her ! Give it her ! ' said he, hanging down his head 
 like a rated cur 
 
 'Ascelin of Lincoln, once Ascelin of Ghent — There was a 
 time when you would have done — what would you not ?— for 
 one glance of Torfrida's eyes. Stay. Do not deceive yourself, 
 fair sir. Torfrida means to ask no favour of you, or of living 
 man. But she commands you. Do the thing she bids, or 
 witli one glance of her eye she sends you childless to your 
 grave.' 
 
 ' Madam ! Lady Torfrida ! Wliat is there I would not do 
 for you ? What have I done now, save avenge your great 
 wrong ? ' 
 
 Torfrida made no answer : but fixed steadily on him eyes 
 which widened every moment. 
 
 ' But, madam ' — and he turned shrinking from the fancied 
 spell—' wliat would you have ? The — the corpse 1 It is in the 
 keeping of — of another lady.' 
 
 ' So ? ' said Torfrida quietly. ' Leave her to me ; ' and she 
 swept past them all, and flung open the bower door at tlieir 
 backs, discovering Alftruda sitting by the dead. 
 
 Tlie ruffians were so utterly appalled, not only by the false 
 powers of magic, but by tlie veritable powers of majesty and 
 eloquence, that they let her do what she would. 
 
 'Out!' cried she, using a short and terrible epithet. 'Out, 
 siren, with fairy's face and tail of fiend, and leave the husband 
 with his wife ! ' 
 
 Alftruda looked up, shrieked ; and then, with the sudden 
 passion of a weak nature, drew a little knife, and sprang up. 
 
 Ivo made a coarse jest. The abbot sprang in : ' For the sake 
 of all holy things, let there be no more murder here ! ' 
 
 Torfrida smiled, and fixed her snake's eye upon her wretched 
 rival. 
 
 ' Out ! woman, and clioose thee a new husband among these 
 French gallants, ere I blast thee from head to foot with the 
 leprosy of Naaman the Syrian.' 
 
 Alftruda shuddered, and fled shrieking into an inner room. 
 
 ' Xow, knights, give me — that which hangs outside.'
 
 XLi HOW HE BEGAN TO GET HIS SOUL'S PRICE 367 
 
 Ascelin hurried out, glad to escape. In a minute he re- 
 turned. 
 
 The head was already taken down. A tall lay brother, the 
 moment he had seen it, had climbed the gable, snatched it away, 
 and now sat in a corner of the yard, liolding it on his knees, 
 talking to it, chiding it, as if it had been alive. When men had 
 offered to take it, he had drawn a battle-axe from under his 
 frock, and threatened to brain all comers. And the monks had 
 warned off Ascelin, saying that the man was mad, and had 
 Berserk fits of superhuman strength and rage. 
 
 ' He will give it me,' said Torfrida, and went out. 
 
 ' Look at that gable, foolish head,' said the madman. ' Ten 
 years agone, you and I took down from tlience another head. 
 O foolish head, to get yourself at last into that same 
 place ! Why would you not be ruled by her, you foolish golden 
 headr 
 
 ' ]\Iartin ! ' said Torfrida. 
 
 'Take it and comb it, mistress, as you used to do. Comb 
 out the golden locks again, fit to shine across the battlefield. 
 She has let them all get tangled into elf-knots, that lazy slut 
 within.' 
 
 Torfrida took it from his hands, dry-eyed, and went in. 
 
 Then the monks silently took up the bier, and all went fortli, 
 and down the Roman road toward the fen. They laid the corpse 
 within the barge, and slowly rowed away. 
 
 ' And past the Deeping, down the Welland stream, 
 By Avinding reaches on, and shining meres 
 Between gray reed-ronds and green alder-beds, 
 And the brown horror of the homeless fen, 
 A dirge of monks and wail of women rose 
 In vain to heaven for the last Englishman ; 
 Then died far otf within the boundless mist, 
 And left the Frenchman master of the land.' 
 
 So Torfrida took the corpse home to Crowland, and buried 
 it in the choir, near the blessed martyr St. Waltheof ; after 
 which she did not die, but lived on many years,^ spending all 
 day in nursing and feeding the Countess Godiva, and lying all 
 night on Kerevvard's tomb, and praying that he might find 
 grace and mercy in that day. 
 
 And at last Godiva died ; and they took her away, and buried 
 her with great pomp in her own minster-church of Coventry. 
 
 And after that Torfrida died likewise ; because she had no- 
 thing else for which to live. And tliey laid her in Hereward's 
 grave, and their dust is mingled to this day. 
 
 And Oger the Breton got back Morcar's lands, and held them 
 at least till the time of Domesday-book. But Manthorpe, Toft, 
 and Witham, Aswart, Tliorold's man, got back ; and they were 
 
 ' If ingulf can be trusted, Torl'ridu died about a.u. 1085.
 
 368 HEREWARD THE WAKE ciiAi'. 
 
 licld for several centuries by tlie abbey of Peterborough, 
 seemingly as some set off for Abbot Tliorold's thirty thousand 
 marks. 
 
 And Ivo Taillebois did evil mightily all his days ; and how 
 he died, and what befell him after death, let Peter of Blois 
 declare. 
 
 And Leof ric the jiriest lived on to a good old age, and above 
 all tilings he remembered the deeds and the sins of his master ; 
 and wrote them in a book, and this is what remains tliereof. 
 
 But when ]\Iartin Lightfoot died no man has said ; for no 
 man in those days took account of such poor churls and run- 
 ning serving-men. 
 
 And Hereward's comrades were all scattered abroad, some 
 maimed, some blinded, some with tongues cut out, to beg by the 
 wayside, or crawl into convents, and then die ; while their sisters 
 and daughters, ladies born and bred, were the slaves of grooms 
 and scullions from beyond the sea. 
 
 And so, as sang Thorkel Skallason — 
 
 ' Cold lieart and blood}^ Land ' 
 Now rule English land. ' 
 
 And after that things waxed even worse and worse, for sixty 
 years and more ; all through the reigns of the two Williams, 
 and of Henry Beauclerc, and of Stephen ; till men saw visions 
 and portents, and thought that the foul fiend was broken loose 
 on earth. And they whispered oftener and oftener that the 
 soul of Hereward jiaunted the Bruneswold, where he loved to 
 hunt the dun deer and the roe. And in the Bruneswold, when 
 Henry of Poitou was made abbot,^ men saw— 'let no man think 
 lightly of the marvel which we are about to relate as a truth, 
 for it was well known all over the country — upon the Sunday, 
 when men sing "Exsurge quare, O Domine," many hunters 
 hunting, black, and tall, and loathly, and their hounds were 
 black and ugly with wide eyes, and they rode on black horses 
 and black bucks. And they saw them in the very deer park in 
 the town of Peterborough, and in all the woods to Stamford ; 
 and tlie monks heard tlie blasts of the horns which they blew 
 in the niglit. Men of truth kept watch upon them, and said 
 that there might be well about twenty or thirty horn-blowers. 
 Tliis was seen and heard all that Lent until Easter.' And the 
 l^'rench monks of Peterborough said how it was The Wake, 
 doomed to wake for ever with Apollyon and all his crew, because 
 lie had stolen the riches of the Golden Borough : but the poor 
 folk knew better, and said, That the miglity outlaw was rejoic- 
 ing in the chase, blowing his horn for Englishmen to rise against 
 the Frencli ; and therefore it was that he was seen first on ' Arise 
 O Lord ' Sunday. 
 
 ^ Laing's Heimskringla. 
 ^ Anglo-Saxon Clironicle, a.d. 1127.
 
 XLi HOW HE BEGAN TO GET HIS SOUL'S TRICE 369 
 
 But they were so sore trodden down thcat they could never 
 rise ; for ' the French ' had filled the land full of castles. They 
 greatly oppressed the wretched people by making them work at 
 these castles ; and when the castles were finished, they filled 
 them with devils and evil men. They took those whom they 
 suspected of having any goods, both men and women, and they 
 put them in prison for their gold and silver, and tortured them 
 with pains unspeakable, for never were any martyrs tormented 
 as these were. They hung some by their feet, and smoked them 
 with foul smoke ; some by the thumbs or by the head, and put 
 burning things on their feet. They put a knotted string round 
 their heads, and twisted it till it went into the brain. They 
 put them in dungeons wherein were adders, and snakes, and 
 toads, and thus wore them out. Some they put into a crucet- 
 house — that is, into a chest that was short and narrow, and they 
 put sharp stones therein, and crushed the man so that they 
 broke all his bones. There were hateful and grim things called 
 sachenteges in many of the castles, which two or three men had 
 enough to do to carry. This sachentege was made thus : — It 
 was fastened to a beam, having a sharp iron to go round a man's 
 throat and neck, so tliat he might no ways sit, nor lie, nor sleep, 
 but he must bear all the iron. Many thousands they wore out 
 with hunger. . . . They were continually levying a tax from 
 the towns, which they called truserie, and when the wretched 
 townsfolk had no more to give, then burnt they all the towns, 
 so that well mightest thou walk a whole day's journey or ever 
 thou shouldest see a man settled in a town, or its lands 
 tilled. . . . 
 
 ' Then was corn dear, and flesh, and cheese, and butter, for 
 there was none in the land. Wretched men starved with 
 liunger. Some lived on alms who had been once rich. Some 
 lied the country. Never was there more misery, and never 
 heathens acted worse than these.' 
 
 For now the sons of the Church's darlings, of the crusaders 
 whom the pope had sent, beneath a gonfanon blessed by him, 
 to destroy the liberties of England, tui-ned by a just retribution 
 upon that very French clergy who had abetted all their iniqui- 
 ties in tlie name of Rome. 'They spared neitlier church nor 
 churchyard, but took all that was valuable therein, and then 
 burned the church and all together. Neither did they spare 
 the lands of bishops, nor of abbots, nor of priests : but they 
 robbed the monks and clergy, and every man plundered his 
 neighbour as much as he could. If two or three men came 
 riding to a town, all the townsfolk fled before tliem, and thought 
 that they were robbers. The bishops and clergy were for ever 
 cursing them : but this to them was notliing, for they were all 
 accursed and forsworn and reprobate. The earth bare no corn : 
 
 ^ Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a.d. 1137. 
 2 B II. T. w.
 
 370 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 you miglit as well have tilled the sea ; for all the land was 
 ruined by such deeds, and it was said openly that Christ and 
 His saints slept.' 
 
 And so was avenged the blood of Harold and his brothers, of 
 Edwin and Morcar, of Waltheof and Hereward. 
 
 And those who had the spirit of Hereward in them fled to the 
 merry greenwood, and became bold outlaws, with Kobin Hood, 
 Scarlet, and John, Adam Bell, and Clym of the Cleugh, and 
 William of Cloudeslee ; and watched with sullen joy the French 
 robbers tearing in pieces each other, and the Church who had 
 blest their crime. 
 
 And they talked and sung of The Wake, and all his doughty 
 deeds, over the hearth in lone farmhouses, or in the outlaw's 
 lodge beneath the hoUins green ; and all the burden of their 
 song was, 'Ah that The Wake were alive again ! ' for they knew 
 not that The Wake was alive for evermore : that only his husk 
 and shell lay mouldering there in Crowland choir ; that above 
 them, and around them, and in them, destined to raise them 
 out of that bitter bondage, and mould them into a great nation, 
 and the parents of still greater nations in lands as yet unknown, 
 brooded the immortal spirit of The Wake, now purged from all 
 earthly dross — even the spirit of Freedom, which can never die. 
 
 CHAPTER XLII 
 
 HOW DEEPING FEN WAS DRAINED 
 
 But war and disorder, ruin and death, cannot last for ever. 
 They are by their own nature exceptional and suicidal, and 
 spend themselves with what they feed on. And then the true 
 laws of God's universe, peace and order, usefulness and life, will 
 i-eassert themselves, as they have been waiting all along to do, 
 hid in God's presence from the strife of men. 
 
 And even so it was with Bourne. 
 
 Nearly eighty years after, in the year of grace 1155, there 
 might have been seen sitting, side by side, and hand in hand, 
 upon a sunny bench on the Bruneswold slope, in the low 
 December sun, an old knight and an .old lady, the master and 
 mistress of Bourne. 
 
 Much had changed since Hereward's days. The house below 
 had been raised a whole story. There were fresh herbs and 
 flowers in the garden, unknown at the time of the Conquest. 
 But the great change was in the fen, especially away toward 
 Deeping, on the south-eastern horizon. 
 
 Where had been lonely meres, foul watercourses, stagnant 
 slime, there were now great dykes, rich and fair corn and grass 
 lands, rows of white cottages. The newly-drained land swarmed 
 with stocks of new breeds : horses and sheep from Flanders,
 
 XLii HOW DEEPING FEN WAS DRAINED 371 
 
 cattle from Normandy ; for Eichard de Rulos was the first — as 
 far as history tells — of that noble class of at^ricultural squires 
 who are England's blessing and England's pride. 
 
 ' For this Richard de Rulos/ says Ingulf, or whoever wrote in 
 liis name, ' who had married the daughter and heiress of Hugli 
 of Evermue, Lord of Bourne and Deeping, being a man of 
 agricultural pursuits, got permission from the monks of Crow- 
 land, for twenty marks of silver, to enclose as much as he would 
 of the common marshes. So he shut out the Welland by a 
 strong embankment, and building thereon numerous tenements 
 and cottages, till in a short time he formed a large " vill," 
 marked out gardens, and cultivated fields ; while, by shutting out 
 the river, he found in the meadow land, which had been lately 
 deep lakes and impassable marshes (wherefore the place was 
 called Deeping, the deep meadow), most fertile fields and desir- 
 able lands, and out of sloughs and bogs accursed made quite a 
 garden of pleasaunce.' 
 
 So there the good man, the beginner of the good work of cen- 
 turies, sat looking out over the fen, and listening to the music 
 which came on the southern breeze, above the low of the kine, 
 and the clang of the wild-fowl settling down to rest, from the 
 bells of Crowland minster far away. 
 
 They were not the same bells which tolled for Hereward and 
 Torfrida. Those had run down in molten streams upon that 
 fatal night when Abbot Ingulf leapt out of bed to see the vast 
 wooden sanctuary wrajit in one sheet of roaring flame, from the 
 carelessness of a plumber who had raked the ashes over his 
 fire in the bell-tower, and left it to smoulder through the night. 
 
 Then perished all the riches of Crowland ; its library too, of 
 more than seven hundred volumes, with that famous Nadir, or 
 Orrery, the like whereof was not in all England, wherein the 
 seven planets were represented, each in their proper metals. 
 And even worse, all the charters of the monastery perished, a 
 loss which involved the monks thereof in centuries of lawsuits, 
 and compelled them to become as industrious and skilful forgers 
 of documents as were to be found in the minsters of the Middle 
 Age. 
 
 But Crowland Minster had been rebuilt in greater glory than 
 ever, by the help of the French gentry round. Abbot Ingulf, 
 finding that St. Gutlilac's plain inability to take care of himself 
 had discredited him much in the fen-men's eyes, fell back. 
 Frenchman as he was, on the virtues of the holy martyr, St. 
 Waltheof, whose tomb he opene<^^l with due reverence, and found 
 the body as whole and uncorrupted as on tlie day on which it 
 was buried ; and the head united to the body, while a fine crim- 
 son line around the neck was tlie only sign remaining of his 
 decollation. 
 
 On seeing wliich Ingulf 'could not contain himself for joy ; 
 and interrupting the response which the brethren were singing,
 
 372 HEREWARD THE WAKE chap. 
 
 with a loud voice began the hymn, " Te Deum Laudamus," on 
 which the chanter, taking it up, enjoined the rest of the 
 brethren to sing it.' After which Ingulf — who had never seen 
 Waltheof in life — discovered that it was none other than he 
 whom he had seen in a vision at Fontenelle, as an earl most 
 gorgeously arrayed, with a tore of gold about his neck, and with 
 him an abbot, two bishops, and two saints, the three former 
 being Usf ran, Ausbert, and Wandresigil of Fontenelle ; and the 
 two saints, of course, St. Guthlac and St. Neot. 
 
 Whereon, crawling on his hands and knees, he kissed the face 
 of the holy martyr, and ' perceived such a sweet odour proceed- 
 ing from the holy body, as he never remembered to have smelt, 
 either in the palace of the king, or in Syria with all its aromatic 
 herbs.' 
 
 Quid plura ? What more was needed for a convent of burnt- 
 out monks 1 St. Waltheof was translated in state to the side of 
 St. Guthlac ; and the news of this translation of the holy 
 martyr being spread throughout the country, multitudes of the 
 faithful flocked daily to tlie tomb, and offering up their vows 
 there, tended in a great degree to ' resuscitate our monastery.' 
 
 But more. The virtues of St. Waltheof were too great not to 
 turn themselves, or be turned, to some practical use. So if not 
 in the days of Ingulf, at least in those of Abbot Joffrid, who 
 came after him, St. Waltheof began again, says Peter of Blois, 
 to work wonderful deeds. 'The blind received their sight, the 
 deaf their hearing, the lame their power of walking, and the 
 dumb their power of speech ; while each day troops innumerable 
 of other sick persons were arriving by every road, as to the very 
 fountain of their safety . . . and by the oflerings of the pilgrims 
 who came flocking in from every part, the revenues of the 
 monastery were increased in no small degree.' 
 
 Only one wicked Norman monk of St. Albans, Audwin by 
 name, dared to dispute the sanctity of the martyr, calling him 
 a wicked ti-aitor who had met with his deserts. In vain did 
 Abbot Joffrid, himself a Norman from St. Evroult, expostulate 
 with the inconvenient blaspliemer. He launched out into 
 invective beyond measure ; till on the spot, in presence of the said 
 father, he was seized with such a stomach-ache, that he went 
 liome to St. Albans, and died in a few days ; after which all 
 went well with Crowland, and the French monks, who worked 
 the English martyr to get money out of the English whom they 
 had enslaved. 
 
 And yet— so strangely mingled for good and evil are the 
 works of men — that lying brotherhood of Crowland set up, in 
 those very days, for pure love of learning and of teaching learn- 
 ing, a little school of letters in a poor town hard by ; wliich be- 
 came, under their auspices, the University of Cambridge. 
 
 So the bells of Crowland were restored, more melodious than 
 ever ; and Richard of Rulos doubtless had his share in their re-
 
 XLii HOW DEEPING FEN WAS DRAINED 373 
 
 storation. And that day they were ringing with a will, and 
 for a good reason : for that day had come the news, that Henry 
 Plantagenet was crowned king of England. 
 
 '"Lord," said the good old knight, "now lettest thou thy 
 servant depart in peace." This day, at last, he sees an English 
 king head the English people.' 
 
 ' God grant,' said the old lady, ' That he may be such a lord 
 to England as thou hast been to Bourne.' 
 
 ' If he will be — and better far will he be, by God's grace, from 
 what I hear of him, than ever I have been — he must learn that 
 which I learnt from thee : to understand these English men, 
 and know what stout and trusty prudhommes they are all, down 
 to the meanest serf, when once one can humour their sturdy in- 
 dependent tempers.' 
 
 'And he must learn, too, the lesson which thou did.st teach 
 me, when I would have had thee, in the pride of youth, put on 
 the magic armour of my ancestors, and win me fame in every 
 tournament and battlefield. Blessed be the day when Richard 
 of Rulos said to me, " If others dare to be men of war, I dare 
 more ; for I dare to be a man of peace. Have patience with 
 me, and I will win for thee and for myself a renown more last- 
 ing, before God and man, than ever was won with lance ! " 
 Do you remember those words, Richard mine ? ' 
 
 The old man leant his head upon his hands. ' It may be that 
 not those words, but the deeds which God has caused to follow 
 them, may, by Christ's merits, bring us a short purgatory and 
 a long heaven.' 
 
 'Amen. Only whatever grief we may endure in the next life 
 for our sins, may we endure it as we have the griefs of this life, 
 hand in hand.' 
 
 ' Amen, Torf rida. There is one thing more to do before we 
 die. The tomb in Crowland ; — Ever .since the fire blackened it, 
 it has seemed to me too poor and mean to cover the dust whicli 
 once held two such noble souls. Let us send over to Normandy 
 for fair white .stone of Caen, and let us carve a tomb worthy of 
 thy grandparents.' 
 
 'And what shall we write thereon?' 
 
 ' What but that which is there already. " Here lies the last 
 of the English." ' 
 
 ' Not so. We will write — " Here lies the last of the old Eng- 
 lish." But upon thy tomb, when thy time comes, the monks of 
 Crowland sliall write — 
 
 ' ■' Here lies the first of the new English ; who, by the inspira- 
 tion of God, began to drain the Fens." ' 
 
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 WESTWARD HO I Two Vols. 
 TWO YEARS AGO. Two Vols. 
 HYPATIA. Two Vols. 
 
 POEMS. 
 
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 ALTON LOCKE. Two Vols 
 HEREWARD. Two Vols 
 Two Vols. 
 
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