Book: Hereward, The Last of the English

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But he 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.

She 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!" [Footnote: "Volo enim in meo tale quid nunc perpeti
corpore semel, quicquid eas ferrei vel e metallo excederet."]

And after that they sat side by side, and talked of love with all honor
and honesty, never heeding the old hag, who crooned to herself in her
barbarian tongue,--

"Quick thaw, long frost,
Quick joy, long pain,
Soon found, soon lost,
You will take your gift again."




CHAPTER XI.

HOW THE HOLLANDERS TOOK HEREWARD FOR A MAGICIAN.


Of this weary Holland war which 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 civilized and
disciplined men, armed to the teeth, well furnished with ships and
military engines, against poor simple folk in "felt coats stiffened with
tar or turpentine, or in very short jackets of hide," says the chronicler,
"who fought by threes, two with a crooked lance and three darts each, and
between them a man with a sword or an axe, who held his shield before
those two;--a very great multitude, but in composition utterly
undisciplined," who came down to the sea-coast, with carts and wagons, 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 armor.

So at least says Leofric's paraphrast, who tells long, confused stories of
battles and campaigns, some of them without due regard to chronology; for
it is certain that the brave Frisians 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," because that event had not then
happened.

And so much for the war among the Meres of Scheldt.




CHAPTER XII.

HOW HEREWARD TURNED BERSERK.


Torfrida's heart misgave her that first night as to the effects of her
exceeding frankness. Her pride in the first place was somewhat wounded;
she had dreamed of a knight who would worship her as his queen, hang on
her smile, die at her frown; and she had meant to bring Hereward to her
feet as such a slave, in boundless gratitude; but had he not rather held
his own, and brought her to his feet, by assuming her devotion as his
right? And if he assumed that, how far could she trust him not to abuse
his claim? Was he quite as perfect, seen close, as seen afar off? And now
that the intoxication of that meeting had passed off, she began to
remember more than one little fault which she would have gladly seen
mended. Certain roughnesses of manner which contrasted unfavorably with
the polish (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 her 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 with glory and renown, all smiles, and beauty, and
health, and good-humor, and gratitude for the magic armor which had
preserved him unhurt, then Torfrida forgot all her fears, and thought
herself the happiest maid alive for four-and-twenty hours at least.

And then 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 civilization without which good manners seem,
even to this day, almost beyond the reach of the white man. Those among
whom 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 Roman civilization had given
a charm to their manners, 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 rest of Baldwin'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 fanfaronades, simply to laugh down a
fashion which was held inconsistent with the modesty of a true knight.
Bitter it was to her to hear him announcing 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 his two mouths the 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 the King of Antioch. And more bitter still, to hear Hereward
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 complimented on the
modesty of her young savage.

But she was a brave maiden; and what was more, she loved him with all her
heart. Else why endure bitter words for his sake? And she set herself to
teach and train the wild outlaw into her ideal of a very perfect knight.

She talked to him of modesty and humility, the root of all virtues; of
chivalry and self-sacrifice; of respect to the weak, 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.

And he drank it all in. Taught 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 civilize
man,--that of woman's tact and woman's purity.

But there were relapses, as was natural. The wine at Robert the Frison's
table was often too good; and then Hereward's tongue was loosed, and
Torfrida justly indignant. And one evening there came a very serious
relapse, and out of which arose a strange adventure.

For one day the Great Marquis sent for his son to Bruges, ere he set out
for another campaign in Holland; and made him a great feast, to which he
invited Torfrida and her mother. For Adela of France, the Queen Countess,
had heard so much of Torfrida's beauty, that 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 honored by such a promotion for her
daughter.

So they went to Bruges, and Hereward and his men went of course; and they
feasted and harped and sang; and the saying was fulfilled,--

"'Tis merry in the hall
When beards wag all."

But the only beard which wagged in that hall was Hereward's; for the
Flemings, like the Normans, prided themselves on their civilized and
smooth-shaven chins, and laughed (behind his back) at Hereward, who prided
himself on keeping his beautiful English beard, with locks of gold which,
like his long golden hair, were combed and curled daily, after the fashion
of the Anglo-Danes.

But Hereward's beard began to wag somewhat too fast, as he sat by
Torfrida's side, when 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 country round; insinuating,
moreover, that Hereward might as well have brought that mare home with him
as a trophy.

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 buffet 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 every man that has taken a blow as yet has never
needed another."

"Hereward will have need of his magic head-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 brains 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 armor, forsooth!" cried he at last. "What care I for armor or for
magic? I will wager to you"--"my armor," 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 Berserk 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 champion," 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."

"Torfrida's champion?" 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 pertinacity 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 baresark I win that mare or die."

"That will be very fit 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 hurry out of her chamber, and
open the door herself.

Martin Lightfoot stood there with a large leather case, which 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?"

"Only that my master bid me say that he cares as little for his own life
as you do." And he turned away.

She caught him by the arm:--

"What is the meaning of this? What is in this mail?"

"You should know best. If young folks cannot be content when they are well
off, they will go farther and fare worse," says Martin Lightfoot. And he
slipt from her grasp and fled into the night.

She took the mail to her room and opened it. It contained the magic armor.

All her anger was melted away. She cried; she blamed herself. He would be
killed; his blood would be on her head. She would have carried it back to
him with her 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 thought she drew herself
into herself, and trying to harden her heart again, went to bed, but not
to sleep; and 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 gayly. She heard the tramp of horse-hoofs. He was moving
a-field 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 in full armor, and
behind him, knight after knight, a wall of shining steel. But by his side
rode one bare-headed, his long yellow curls floating 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 he 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 what 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 Torfrida rushed away and broke into wild weeping.




CHAPTER XIII.

HOW HEREWARD WON MARE SWALLOW.


On a bench at the door of his high-roofed 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 himself 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 harried him to the bare walls, as they
would probably do ere all was over.

As he looked at the horses, some half-mile off, he saw a strange stir
among them. They began whinnying and pawing round a four-footed thing in
the midst, which might be a badger, or a wolf,--though both were very
uncommon in that pleasant isle of Walcheren; but which plainly had no
business there. Whereon he took up a mighty staff, and strode over the fen
to see.

He found neither wolf nor badger; but to his exceeding surprise, 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 which 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 his hind legs in his face, and
then springing on to the said hind legs ran away with extraordinary
swiftness some fifty yards; and then went down on all-fours and began
grazing again.

"Beest thou man or devil?" cried Dirk, somewhat frightened.

The thing looked up. The face at least was human.

"Art thou a Christian man?" asked it in bad Frisian, intermixed with
snorts and neighs.

"What's that to thee?" growled Dirk; 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? Then there is
hope,"

"Hope of what?" Dirk was growing more and more frightened.

"Of her, my sister! Ah, my sister, can it be that I shall find thee at
last, after ten thousand miles, and thirty 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 a 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 had 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
wishing to turn the subject, "leave off making a beast of thyself awhile,
and tell me who thou art."

"I have made no beast of myself, most noble Earl of the Frisians, for so
you doubtless are. I was made a beast of,--a horse 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, fled 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 upon 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?"

"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 here."

"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 that foal's pedigree better than I do my
own."

"Man, man, simple, though honest! Hast thou never heard of the skill of
the enchanter 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
and perhaps unwilling bride."

"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 happened yet; that the enchanter, in fleeing, has not wrung your
neck as he went out, or cast a spell on you, which will fire your barns,
lame your geese, give your fowls the pip, your horses the glanders, your
cattle the murrain, your children the St. Vitus' dance, your wife the
creeping palsy, and yourself the chalk-stones in all your fingers."

"The Lord have mercy on me! If the half of this be true, I will turn
Christian. I will 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 preferest 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 whether she be princess or not, I'm loath to part with
her."

"Keep her then, and keep with her 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 catholic princess, kept in bestial
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 that is more than I ever asked yet of man. But it is
hard," growled he, "that a man should lose his money, because a rogue
sells him a princess in disguise."

"Then sell her again; sell her, as thou valuest thy life, to the first
Christian 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, and so thou wilt both lose thy money and get her curse.
Farewell, and my malison abide with thee!"

And the thing, without another word, ran right away, neighing as it went,
leaving Dirk in a state of abject terror.

He went home. He cursed the mare, he cursed the man who sold her, he
cursed the day he saw her, he cursed the day he was born. He told his
story with exaggerations and confusions in plenty to all in the house; and
terror fell on them likewise. No one, that evening, dare go down into the
fen to drive the horses up; and 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.

The 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 door.

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 cross. "Can any
good Christian give me a drink of milk?"

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