Book: Hereward, The Last of the English

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But one may fancy, for once in a way, what William's thoughts were, when
they brought 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?

As he pored over the map, by the light of bog-deal torch or rush candle,
what would he see upon it?

Three separate blazes of insurrection, from northwest to east, along the
Watling Street.

At Chester, Edric, "the wild Thane," who, according to Domesday-book, had
lost vast lands in Shropshire; Algitha, Harold's widow, and Blethwallon
and all his Welsh,--"the white mantles," swarming along Chester streets,
not as usually, to tear and ravage like the wild-cats of their own rocks,
but fast friends by blood of Algitha, once their queen on Penmaenmawr.
[Footnote: See the admirable description of the tragedy of Penmaenmawr, in
Bulwer's 'Harold.'] Edwin, the young Earl, Algitha's brother, Hereward's
nephew,--he must be with them too, if he were a man.

Eastward, round Stafford, and the centre of Mercia, another blaze of
furious English valor. 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 Sweyn, 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 mistaken his man.

And north, at York, in the rear of those three insurrections lay
Gospatrick, Waltheof, and Marlesweyn, with the Northumbrian 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 his of right. The foe whom he had part
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, it may be, 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's men.

He determined, it seems--for he did it--to cut the English line in two,
and marched upon Stafford as its centre.

So it seems; for all records of these campaigns are fragmentary, confused,
contradictory. The Normans fought, and had no time to write history. The
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 he was, who filled 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,
might feast themselves upon the prey which others won for them. To them,
the death of an abbot, the squabbles of a monastery, the journey of a
prelate to Rome, are more important than the manoeuvres which decided the
life and freedom of tens of thousands.

So all we know is, that William fell upon Morcar's men at Stafford, and
smote them with a great destruction; rolling the fugitives west and east,
toward Edwin, perhaps, at Chester, certainly toward Hereward in the fens.

At Stafford met him the fugitives from York, Malet, his wife, and
children, with the dreadful news that the Danes had joined Gospatrick, and
that York was lost.

William burst into fiendish fury. He accused the wretched men of treason.
He cut off their hands, thrust out their eyes, threw Malet into prison,
and stormed on north.

He lay at Pontefract for three weeks. 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. Gospatrick and
Waltheof's hearts had failed them, and they had retired before the great
captain.

Florence, of Worcester, says that William bought Earl Osbiorn off, giving
him much money, and leave to forage for his fleet along the coast, and
that Osbiorn was outlawed on his return to Denmark.

Doubtless William would have so done if he could. Doubtless the angry and
disappointed English raised such accusations against the earl, believing
them to be true. But is not the simpler cause of Osbiorn's conduct to be
found in this plain fact? He had sailed from Denmark to put Sweyn, his
brother, on the throne. He found, on his arrival, that Gospatrick and
Waltheof had seized it in the name of Edgar Atheling. What had 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?

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 death and misery there was no end.
Yorkshire, and much of the neighboring counties, lay waste, for the next
nine years. It did not recover itself fully till several generations
after.

The Danes had boasted that they would keep their Yule at York. William
kept his Yule there instead. He sent to Winchester 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 other's corpses, he sat in his royal
robes, and gave away the lands of Edwin and Morcar to his liegemen. And
thus, like the Romans, from whom he derived both his strategy and his
civilization, he "made a solitude and called it peace."

He did not give away Waltheof's lands; and only part of Gospatrick's. He
wanted Gospatrick; he loved Waltheof, and wanted him likewise.

Therefore, through the desert which he himself had made, he forced his way
up to the Tees a second time, over snow-covered moors; and this time St.
Cuthbert had sent no fog, being satisfied, presumably, with William's
orthodox attachment to St. Peter and Rome; so the Conqueror treated
quietly with Waltheof and Gospatrick, who lay at Durham.

Gospatrick got back his ancestral 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 his province. And then, to the astonishment alike of
Normans and English, and it may be, of himself, he married 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 exercise over the weak.

Then William turned southwest. 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 plains 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 bogs, 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 flats.

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, and trampled out the
last embers of rebellion; he 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 fenmen?

It may be that he understood him and them. It may be that he meant to
treat with Sweyn, as he had done, if the story be true, with Osbiorn. It
is more likely that he could do no more; that his army, after so swift and
long a campaign, required rest. It may be that the time of service of many
of his mercenaries was expired. Be that as it may, he mustered them at Old
Sarum,--the Roman British burgh which still stands on the down side, and
rewarded them, according to their deserts, from the lands of the 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 as 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 them in Norfolk and
Suffolk cut him off from the south. A castle at Cambridge closed the south
end of the fens; another 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 Lindsay and right up to the Humber.

Gladly would he have done so, when he heard that the Danes were wintering
in the Humber.

"But how can we take Lincoln Castle without artillery, or even a
battering-ram?"

"Let us march past, it then, and leave it behind."

"Ah, my sons," said Hereward, laughing sadly, "do you suppose that the
Mamzer spends his time--and Englishmen's life and labor--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 have 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 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 Torfrida. "I have read of such things in books of the
ancients, and I have watched them making continually,--I little knew why,
or that I should ever turn engineer."

"What is there that you do not know?" cried they all at once. And Torfrida
actually showed herself a fair practical engineer.

But where was iron to come from? Iron for catapult springs, iron for ram
heads, iron for bolts and bars?

"Torfrida," said Here ward, "yon are wise. Can you use the divining-rod?

"Why, my knight?"

"Because there might be iron ore in the wolds; and if you could find it by
the rod, we might get it up and smelt it."

Torfrida said humbly that she would try; and walked with the divining-rod
between her pretty fingers 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 off the cart-wheels," said Leofwin Prat.

"But how will the carts do without? For we shall want them if we march."

"In Provence, where I was born, the wheels of the carts are made out of
one round piece of wood. Could we not cut out wheels like them?" 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-colored 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 with 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, an 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 herself safely out of this world, and into
the world 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; and clung to them all the more fiercely, the more desperate they
seemed.

So that small band of gallant men labored on, waiting for the Danes, and
trying to make artillery and take Lincoln Keep. And all the while--so
unequal is fortune when God so 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
night and day, smelting and forging English iron, wherewith the Frenchmen
might slay Englishmen.

William--though perhaps he knew it not himself--had, in securing Sussex
and Surrey, secured the then great iron-field of England, and an unlimited
supply of weapons; and to that circumstance, 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 Morcar; 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 first seized on the military
capabilities of Ely is not told. Leofric the deacon, who is likely to know
best, says that there were men there already holding theirs 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 whatsoever, 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 them a Count Tosti (according to
Leofric), unknown to history; a Siward Barn, or "the boy," who had been
dispossessed of lands in Lincolnshire; and other valiant and noble
gentlemen,--the last wrecks of the 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 Yorkshire laid waste with fire and sword. He it
was, most certainly, who brought the worse news still, that Gospatrick 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 Hereward heard that Waltheof was married to the Conqueror's
niece, he smote his hands together, and cursed him, and the mother who
bore him to Siward the Stout.

"Could thy father rise from his grave, he would split thy craven head in
the very lap of the Frenchwoman."

"A hard lap will he find it, Hereward," said Torfrida. "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
fish-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 he has taken poor
Morcar's too, and 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 Lindsay 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 feel his head safe on his shoulders,--no blame to him--will
draw each from me for fear of this new Earl, and leave us to end as a
handful of outlaws. I see it all. As 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 pause, more gently, but in a
tone of exquisite sadness, "you were right, as you always are. I am no
match for that man. I see it now."

"I never said that. Only--"

"Only you told me again and again that he was the wisest man on earth."

"And yet, for that very reason, I bade you win glory without end, by
defying the wisest man on earth."

"And do you bid me do it still?"

"God knows what I bid," said Torfrida, 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, Torfrida. 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 do."

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 the course of that winter died good Abbot Brand. Hereward went over to
see him, and found him mumbling to himself texts of Isaiah, and confessing
the sins of his people.

"'Woe to the vineyard that bringeth 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 be without inhabitants.' 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 the Lord.' 'Therefore my people are gone into
captivity, because they have no knowledge.' Ah, those Frenchmen have
knowledge, and too much of it; while 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 shalt escape, Hereward, thou stout-hearted?"

"I neither know nor care; but this I know, that whithersoever I go, I
shall 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 right royal
train.

Then Hereward sent Abbot Thorold word, that if he or his Frenchmen put
foot into Peterborough, he, Hereward, would burn it over their heads. And
that if he rode a mile beyond Stamford town, he should walk back into it
barefoot in his shirt.

Whereon Thorold abode at Stamford, and kept up his spirits by singing the
songs of Roland,--which some say he himself composed.

A week after that, and the Danes were come.

A mighty fleet, with Sweyn Ulfsson at their head, went up the Ouse toward
Ely. Another, with Osbiorn at their head, having joined them off the 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, Gottlanders from
Wisby; and with them savages from Esthonia, Finns from Aland, Letts who
still offered in the forests of Rugen, human victims to the four-headed
Swantowit; foul hordes in sheep-skins and primeval filth, who might have
been scented from Hunstanton Cliff 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,--and that the savages
from the Baltic shore would certainly do, if they could, however
reasonable the Danes, Orkneymen, 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 disgusted, as they had
good right to be. They had gone to the Humber, and found nothing but ruin;
the land waste; the French holding both the shores of the Humber; and
Osbiorn cowering in Humber-mouth, hardly 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 Crowland. 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 Crowland, endowed and
honored by Canute the Great,--Crowland, whose abbot was a Danish nobleman,
whose monks were Danes to a man, of their own flesh and blood. Canute'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 in their own tongue, blessed them in St. Guthlac's name as the
saviors of England, and went home 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 Englishmen as friends, and spare the people of the fens."

It was a great crime in the eyes of men of that time. A great crime, taken
simply, in Hereward's own eyes. But necessity knows 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.

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