Book: Hereward, The Last of the English

C >> Charles Kingsley >> Hereward, The Last of the English




"This to you, beloved, that, great as you are, Torfrida 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 love 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 Hereward.

"And this it said, with such praises and courtesies concerning you, as
made thy wife's heart beat high with pride: 'If Hereward Leofricsson will
come home to England, he shall have his rights in law again, and his
manors in Lincolnshire, and a thanes-ship 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, Torfrida, Hereward's queen?"

"You will not be angry if I answered the letter for you?"

"If you answered it one way,--no. If another,--yes."

Torfrida trembled. Then she looked Hereward full in the face with 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 hands 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 Torfrida 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 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 honor, my hero,--not with
honor."

"Not with honor. Get me gay garments out of the chest, and let us go in
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? 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 Torfrida?"

"It was not so said to me that I could answer. I had it by a side-wind,
through the Countess Judith." [Footnote: Tosti's wife, Earl Baldwin's
daughter, sister of Matilda, William the Conqueror's wife.]

"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?"

"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?"

"He asks for help from all the ends of the 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?" 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?"

"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 pay itself--out
of English purses. What answer would you have me make to that, 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 he have the Pope's blessing, and the Pope's
banner--Dare we resist the Holy Father?"

"Holy step-father, you mean; for a step-father 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."

"That may be," said he, half testily, with a curse on the tanner's
grandson and his French popinjays, "and our Englishmen are as good as any
two Norsemen, as the Norse themselves say." He could not divine, and
Torfrida hardly liked to explain to him the glamour which the Duke of
Normandy had cast over her, as the representative of chivalry, learning,
civilization, a new and nobler life for men than the world had yet seen;
one which seemed to connect the young races of Europe 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. "Hereward,
Hereward, have I not told you how, though body be strong, mind is
stronger? That is what that man knows; and therefore 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, 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 him? 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 that the
honor of which you spoke so boldly to Harold Godwinsson?"

Torfrida was silent. To have brought Hereward under the influence of
William 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 thing, that you will make no fierce or
desperate answer to the Duke."

"And why not answer the tanner as he deserves?"

"Because my art, and my heart too, tells me that your fortunes 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?" 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?"

"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 him. 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. Remember what he did to them of Alencon, 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 off their hands, and shoot
them into the town from mangonels,--he must go far and thrive well ere I
give him a chance of doing that by me."

"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, handless--"

"This is cold comfort for a man just 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. Be not high-minded. Promise me to
answer this man wisely. The more crafty he is, the more crafty must you be
likewise."

"Let us tell this mighty hero, then," said Hereward,--trying to laugh away
her fears, and perhaps his own,--"that while he has the Holy Father on his
side, he can need no help from a poor sinful worm like me."

"Hereward, Hereward!"

"Why, is there aught about hides 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 Hereward.

"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
Gospatrick, 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 l'outrance_, 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 there 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, and then 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 WAS 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 hands, clapt him on the back, swore with many
oaths, that he had heard of his fame in all lands, that he always said
that he would turn out a champion and a gallant knight, and had said it
long before he killed the bear. As for killing it, it was no more than he
expected, and nothing to what Hereward 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 honor, as well as his safety, depended on his striking
again, when he was struck.

"And how is little Alftruda? Big she must be now?" 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 little 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, which
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 an Etheliza [Footnote: A
princess of the royal blood of Cerdic, and therefore of Edward the
Confessor.] into my house"; and Gilbert swore a great deal.

"How was she an Etheliza?" asked Hereward, who cared nothing about the
matter. "And how came she into your house? 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? Well, warm is the bed that is well earned.
But as for her;--see here, and I'll tell you. She was Gospatrick's ward
and kinswoman,--how, I do not rightly know. But this I know, that she
comes from Uchtred, the earl whom Canute slew, and that she is heir to
great estates in Northumberland.

"Gospatrick, that fought at Dunsinane?"

"Yes, not the old Thane, his uncle, whom Tosti has murdered; but
Gospatrick, King Malcolm's cousin, Dolfin'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; of course I was not going to do other men's
work for naught; so I would have married her up to my poor boy, if he had
but lived. But he would not live, as you know. 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 then."

"You were very kind. But how is she an Etheliza?"

"Etheliza? Twice over. Her father was of high blood among those Saxons;
and if not, are not all the Gospatricks Ethelings? Their grandmother,
Uchtred's wife, was Ethelred, Evil-Counsel's daughter, King Edward of
London's sister; and I have heard that this girl's grandfather was their
son,--but died young,--or was killed with his father. Who cares?"

"Not I," quoth Hereward.

"Well--he 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, murdered by Tosti last
winter."

"I know."

"Whereon Gospatrick 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? What I did. I was coming hither on business
of my own, so I put her on board ship, 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?"

"Impossible," quoth Hereward.

"But see how a wise man is lost by fortune. When I come here, whom should
I find but Dolfin himself? The dog 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 ravisher, and offers 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 I 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 now-a-days, young sire; nor justice either, I
think; for when Baldwin hears us both--and I told my story as cannily as I
could--he tells me that he is very sorry for an old vassal and kinsman,
and so forth,--but I must either disgorge or fight."

"Then fight," quoth Hereward.

"'Per se aut per campioneem,'--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. I 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 Gospatrick, I
have a hornet's nest about my ears. Not only he and his sons,--who are
masters of Scotch Northumberland, [Footnote: Between Tweed and Forth.]--
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
beside, 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
Etheliza, 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 I? Let him be twice as good, I'd 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 favored 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! You 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 Gospatricks."

"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 all?"

"Very little, indeed, as all the world knows, if one has money enough, and
power enough."

"And you have both," they say.

"But, still more unhappily, my money is my wife's."

"Peste!"

"And more unhappily still, I am so foolishly fond of her, that I would
sooner have 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."

"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 Dolfin, after all?"

To which proposal Hereward gave no encouragement.

"And now, my tres beausire, may I ask you, in return, what business brings
you to Flanders?"

"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 has brought out of Scotland a few gallant
gentlemen, and stout housecarles of my acquaintance."

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 'colonize' 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 clerk you are! That sounds like Scripture."

"And so it is. I heard it in a French priest's sermon, which he preached
here in St. Omer a Sunday or two back, exhorting all good Catholics, in
the Pope's name, to enter upon the barbarous 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 other men's hides."

Gilbert chuckled.

"You laugh. The priest did not; for after sermon I went up to him, and
told him 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 which should
by 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?"

"God and his Saints alone, thou fiend out of the pit!" quoth 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? They say William has offered thee the earldom
of Northumberland."

"He has not. And if he has, it is not his to give. And if it were, it is
by right neither mine nor my nephews', but Waltheof Siwardsson's. Now
hearken unto me; and settle it in your mind, 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--"

"Stay. Harold has large manors in Lincolnshire, and so has Edith his
sister; and what of them, Sir Hereward?"

"That the man who touches them, even though the men on them may fight on
Harold's side, had 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 fight to
the death."

"Best make young Waltheof earl, then."

"Best keep thy foot out of them, and the foot of any man for whom thou
carest. Now, good by. 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, talked over old passages,
complimented him on his fame, lamented that he himself had won no such
honors in the field, Hereward felt much more inclined to fight for him
than against him.

Presently the ladies entered from the bower inside the hall. A buzz of
expectation rose from all the knights, and Alftruda's name was whispered
round.

She came in, and Hereward saw at the first glance that Gilbert had for
once in his life spoken truth. So beautiful a girl he had never beheld;
and as she swept down toward him he for one moment forgot Torfrida, and
stood spell-bound like the rest.

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. And 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 Dolfin, who stood trembling with expectation 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 shrieked a bagpipe, 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 the accursed,
it bends not even to Malcolm the Anointed,
But it bends like a harebell--who shall blame it?--
before the breath of beauty."

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