Book: Hereward, The Last of the English

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Suddenly Hereward started, and sprang up, with a cry of fire.

"What? Where?" cried his comrades, and the monks who 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?"

"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.

Then 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 and went forth, each feeling himself--and
surely not in vain--a better man.

At least this is certain, that Hereward would say to his dying day, how he
had often proved that none would fight so well as those who had received
their sword from God's knights the monks. And therefore he would have, in
after years, almost all his companions knighted by the monks; and brought
into Ely with him that same good custom which he had learnt at
Peterborough, and kept it up as long as he held the isle.

So says the chronicler Leofric, the minstrel and priest.

It was late when they got back to Crowland. The good Abbot received them
with a troubled face.

"As I feared, my Lord, you have been too hot and hasty. The French have
raised the country against you."

"I have 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, whom God confound. And he has sworn to have your
life, and has gathered knights and men-at-arms at Lynn in Norfolk."

"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 forever, my lord. Farewell."

A week after, a boatman brought news to Crowland, how Sir Frederick was
sitting in his inn at Lynn, when there came in one with a sword, and said:
"I am Hereward. 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 armor, 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 forever, "Hereward is
come home again!"

And after that, the fen-men said to each other, that all the birds upon
the meres cried nothing, save "Hereward is come home again!"

And so, already surrounded with myth and mystery, Hereward 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, and 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 his
name hinted, a wood-cutter's son), he still had his deserts. Valiant he
was, cunning, and skilled in war. He and his troop of Angevine ruttiers
had fought like tigers by William's side, at Hastings; and he had 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, Hereward's own.

"A fat land and fair," said he to himself; "and, after I have hanged a few
more of these barbarians, a peaceful fief enough to hand down to the
lawful heirs of my body, if I had one. I must marry. Blessed Virgin! this
it is to serve and honor your gracious majesty, 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?"

Then thought he over the peerless beauties of the Lady Lucia, Edwin and
Morcar's sister, almost as fair as that hapless aunt of hers,--first
married (though that story is now denied) to the wild Griffin, Prince of
Snowdon, and then to his conqueror, and (by complicity) murderer, Harold,
the hapless king. Eddeva faira, Eddeva pulcra, stands her name in
Domesday-book even now, 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 he 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 her I will, unless the Mamzer, in his present
merciful and politic 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 humor, 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. 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 them back their lands, beside 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
rebellion, and a 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 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, ran forward, and almost thrown
himself under the horse's feet.

"Mercy, 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 his father's before him;
and do not send a sorely tempted soul out of the world for a paltry pike."

"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 splendeur Dex" (Ivo thought it fine to use King
William's favorite oath), "I will hew it off!"

The priest looked at him, with something of honest English fierceness in
his eyes, and dropping the bridle, muttered to himself in Latin: "The
bloodthirsty and deceitful man shall not live out half 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 her, 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 by-standers 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.
Who 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 yesterday."

"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 through the
air seven feet aloft, with his heels higher than his head, on the further
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 up to
the ditch, and stopping short at fifteen feet of water.

"Shoot, some one! Where are the bows gone?"

The heron was gone 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 shield, not over his body, but over his bare legs; sprang
up as the shaft stuck in the ground beside him, ran on, planted his pole
in the next dike, 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! he is the man who set free the four men at Wrokesham Bridge
last night."

"Set free! Are they not hanged and dead?"

"We--we dared not tell you. But he came upon us--"

"Single-handed, you cowards?"

"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 another, and another.'

"Till you all ran 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 fiend."

"Beasts, fools! Well, I have hanged this one, at least!" growled Ivo, and
then rode sullenly on.

"Who is this fellow?" cried he to the trembling English.

"Wulfric Raher, 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 friend 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 toward 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 of Crowland's, please your lordship," said she, trembling.

"Much too pretty to belong to monks. Chuck her up behind you, one of you."

The 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.

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-dike and swept right and left at the horses' legs.

The men recoiled. One horse went down, lamed for life; another staggered
backwards into the further lode, and was drowned. But an arrow went
through the brave serf's heart, and Ivo rode on, cursing more bitterly
than ever, and comforted himself by flying his hawks at a covey of
patridges.

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 pilgrimage
to Jerusalem, that thou comest in this fashion? Or dost mean to return to
Anjou as bare as thou camest out of it?"

For Sir Robert had, like Edgar in Shakespear's _Lear_, "reserved
himself a blanket, else had we all been shamed."

But very little more did either he, his lady, and his three children 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 barbarians rose on us last
night,--with Azer, the ruffian who owned my 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 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."

"What shall we do with the lass?"

"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."

So they rode back. Coming from Deeping two hours after, Azer and his men
found the girl on the road, dead.

"Another count in the long score," quoth Azer. But when, 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 Robert and his family were well
clothed and fed, there galloped into Spalding from, the north Sir Ascelin,
nephew and man of Thorold, would-be Abbot of Peterborough, and one of the
garrison of Lincoln, which was then held by Hereward's old friend, Gilbert
of Ghent.

"Not bad news, I hope," cried Ivo, as Ascelin clanked into the hall. "We
have enough of our own. Here is all Kesteven, as the barbarians call it,
risen, and they are murdering us right and left."

"Worse news than that, Ivo Taillebois," ("Sir," or "Sieur," Ascelin was
loath 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 proclaimed 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. Gospatrick and Marlesweyn are
back out of Scotland. They attacked Robert de Comines [Footnote: Ancestor
of the Comyns of Scotland.] 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,--Archill 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?"

"You will see some day. Now, I will tell you but one word. When fools make
hay, wise men can 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 Lic--nic--what the pest do you call that
outlandish place, which no civilized lips can pronounce?"

"Lic-nic-cole?" 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 English slaves to crop them for six months. Men! arm and horse Sir
Robert of Deeping. Then arm and horse yourselves. We march north in half
an hour, bag and baggage, scrip and scrippage. You are all bachelors, like
me, and travel light. So off with you!--Sir Ascelin, you will eat and
drink?"

"That will I."

"Quick, then, butler! and after that pack up the Englishman'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. To strike swiftly, and strike 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."

"Pardieu! 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 younger men. "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? I am sorry to rattle you about thus, madame, but war has no
courtesies; 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 victims. "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 FOE ENGLAND ONCE AND FOR ALL.


So Hereward fought the Viscount of Pinkney, who had the usual luck which
befell those who crossed swords with him, 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.

Baldwin, the _debonnaire_ marquis, had not lived to see this fruit of
his long efforts to please everybody. He had gone to his rest the year
before; and now there ruled in Bruges his son, 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
they 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 offered 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 surprise and rage when they heard that Gospatrick and the
Confederates had proclaimed Edgar Atheling king.

"Fools! they will ruin all!" cried Gyda. "Do they expect Swend Ulfsson,
who never moved a finger yet, unless he saw that it would pay him 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 him on the throne will find it very easy to take him off again when
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, ever
rally round an Atheling of Cerdic's house? They are raising a Wessex army
in Northumbria; a southern army in the north. There is no real loyalty
there toward the Atheling, not even the tie of kin, as there would be to
Swend. The boy is a mere stalking-horse, behind which each of these greedy
chiefs expects to get back his own lands; and if they can get them back by
any other means, well and good. Mark my words, Sir Hereward, that cunning
Frenchman will treat with them 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 speculated reasonably on such
an event.

At least, let this be said, that when historians have complained of the
treachery of King Swend Ulfsson and his Danes, they have forgotten certain
broad and simple facts.

Swend sailed for England to take a kingdom which he believed to be his by
right; which he had formerly demanded of William. When he arrived there,
he found himself a mere cat's-paw for recovering that kingdom for an
incapable boy, whom he believed to have no right to the throne at all.

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.
Gospatrick 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 Frenchmen cried: "This darkness is from St. Cuthbert 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?"

And the French turned and fled from before the face of St. Cuthbert; 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 Swend 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 Flanders, and
Richilda, his sorceress-mother, ruled the land in his name. She began to
oppress the Flemings; not those of French Flanders, 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 friend; 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, breathless, 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!"

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