Book: Hereward, The Last of the English

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"I will warrant him to find his nest well lined, wherever he be. But of
yourself?"

"I refused to go. I could not face again that bleak black North.
Beside--but that is no concern of Hereward's--"

Hereward was on the point of saying, "Can anything concern you, and not be
interesting to me?"

But she went on,--

"I refused, and--"

"And he misused you?" asked he, fiercely.

"Better if he had. Better if he had tied me to his stirrup, and scourged
me along into Scotland, than have left me to new dangers and to old
temptations."

"What temptations?"

Alftruda did not answer; but went on,--

"He told me, in his lofty Scots' fashion, that I was free to do what I
list. That he had long since seen that I cared not for him; and that he
would find many a fairer lady in his own land."

"There he lied. So you did not care for him? He is a noble knight."

"What is that to me? Women's hearts are not to be bought and sold with
their bodies, as I was sold. Care for him? I care for no creature upon
earth. Once I cared for Hereward, like a silly child. Now I care not even
for him."

Hereward was sorry to hear that. Men are vainer than women, just as
peacocks are vainer than peahens; and Hereward was--alas for him!--a
specially vain man. Of course, for him to fall in love with Alftruda would
have been a shameful sin,--he would not have committed it for all the
treasures of Constantinople; but it was a not unpleasant thought that
Alftruda should fall in love with him. But he only said, tenderly and
courteously,--

"Alas, poor lady!"

"Poor lady. Too true, that last. For whither am I going now? Back to that
man once more."

"To Dolfin?"

"To my master, like a runaway slave. I went down south to Queen Matilda. I
knew her well, and she was kind to me, as she is to all things that
breathe. But now that Gospatrick is come into the king's grace again, and
has bought the earldom of Northumbria, from Tweed to Tyne--"

"Bought the earldom?"

"That has he; and paid for it right heavily."

"Traitor and fool! He will not keep it seven years. The Frenchman will
pick a quarrel with him, and cheat him out of earldom and money too."

The which William did, within three years.

"May it be so! But when he came into the king's grace, he must needs
demand me back in his son's name."

"What does Dolfin want with you?"

"His father wants my money, and stipulated for it with the king. And
beside, I suppose I am a pretty plaything enough still."

"You? You are divine, perfect. Dolfin is right. How could a man who had
once enjoyed you live without you?"

Alftruda laughed,--a laugh full of meaning; but what that meaning was,
Hereward could not divine.

"So now," she said, "what Hereward has to do, as a true and courteous
knight, is to give Alftruda safe conduct, and, if he can, a guard; and to
deliver her up loyally and knightly to his old friend and fellow-warrior,
Dolfin Gospatricksson, earl of whatever he can lay hold of for the current
month."

"Are you in earnest?"

Alftruda laughed one of her strange laughs, looking straight before her.
Indeed, she had never looked Hereward in the face during the whole ride.

"What are those open holes? Graves?"

"They are Barnack stone-quarries, which Alfgar my brother gave to
Crowland."

"So? That is pity. I thought they had been graves; and then you might have
covered me up in one of them, and left me to sleep in peace."

"What can I do for you, Alftruda, my old play-fellow: Alftruda, whom I
saved from the bear?"

"If she had foreseen the second monster into whose jaws she was to fall,
she would have prayed you to hold that terrible hand of yours, which never
since, men say, has struck without victory and renown. You won your first
honor for my sake. But who am I now, that you should turn out of your
glorious path for me?"

"I will do anything,--anything. But why miscall this noble prince a
monster?"

"If he were fairer than St. John, more wise than Solomon, and more valiant
than King William, he is to me a monster; for I loathe him, and I know not
why. But do your duty as a knight, sir. Convey the lawful wife to her
lawful spouse."

"What cares an outlaw for law, in a land where law is dead and gone? I
will do what I--what you like. Come with me to Torfrida at Bourne; and let
me see the man who dares try to take you out of my hand."

Alftruda laughed again.

"No, no. I should interrupt the little doves in their nest. Beside, the
billing and cooing might make me envious. And I, alas! who carry misery
with me round the land, might make your Torfrida jealous."

Hereward was of the same opinion, and rode silent and thoughtful through
the great woods which are now the noble park of Burghley.

"I have found it!" said he at last. "Why not go to Gilbert of Ghent, at
Lincoln?"

"Gilbert? Why should he befriend me?"

"He will do that, or anything else, which is for his own profit."

"Profit? All the world seems determined to make profit out of me. I
presume you would, if I had come with you to Bourne."

"I do not doubt it. This is a very wild sea to swim in; and a man must be
forgiven, if he catches at every bit of drift-timber."

"Selfishness, selfishness everywhere;--and I suppose you expect to gain by
sending me to Gilbert of Ghent?"

"I shall gain nothing, Alftruda, save the thought that you are not so far
from me--from us--but that we can hear of you,--send succor to you if you
need."

Alftruda was silent. At last--

"And you think that Gilbert would not be afraid of angering the king?"

"He would not anger the king. Gilbert's friendship is more important to
William, at this moment, than that of a dozen Gospatricks. He holds
Lincoln town, and with it the key of Waltheof's earldom: and things may
happen, Alftruda--I tell you; but if you tell Gilbert, may Hereward's
curse be on you!"

"Not that! Any man's curse save yours!" said she in so passionate a voice
that a thrill of fire ran through Hereward. And he recollected her scoff
at Bruges,--"So he could not wait for me?" And a storm of evil thoughts
swept through him. "Would to heaven!" said he to himself, crushing them
gallantly down, "I had never thought of Lincoln. But there is no other
plan."

But he did not tell Alftruda, as he meant to do, that she might see him
soon in Lincoln Castle as its conqueror and lord. He half hoped that when
that day came, Alftruda might be somewhere else.

"Gilbert can say," he went on, steadying himself again, "that you feared
to go north on account of the disturbed state of the country; and that, as
you had given yourself up to him of your own accord, he thought it wisest
to detain you, as a hostage for Dolfin's allegiance."

"He shall say so. I will make him say so."

"So be it, Now, here we are at Stamford town; and I must to my trade. Do
you like to see fighting, Alftruda,--the man's game, the royal game, the
only game worth a thought on earth? For you are like to see a little in
the next ten minutes."

"I should like to see you fight. They tell me none is so swift and
terrible in the battle as Hereward. How can you be otherwise, who slew the
bear,--when we were two happy children together? But shall I be safe?"

"Safe? of course," said Hereward, who longed, peacock-like, to show off
his prowess before a lady who was--there was no denying it--far more
beautiful than even Torfrida.

But he had no opportunity to show off his prowess. For as he galloped in
over Stamford Bridge, Abbot Thorold galloped out at the opposite end of
the town through Casterton, and up the Roman road to Grantham.

After whom Hereward sent Alftruda (for he heard that Thorold was going to
Gilbert at Lincoln) with a guard of knights, bidding them do him no harm,
but say that Hereward knew him to be a _preux chevalier_ and lover of
fair ladies; that he had sent him a right fair one to bear him company to
Lincoln, and hoped that he would sing to her on the way the song of
Roland.

And Alftruda, who knew Thorold, went willingly, since it could no better
be.

After which, according to Gaimar, Hereward tarried three days at Stamford,
laying a heavy tribute on the burgesses for harboring Thorold and his
Normans; and also surprised at a drinking-bout a certain special enemy of
his, and chased him from room to room sword in hand, till he took refuge
shamefully in an outhouse, and begged his life. And when his knights came
back from Grantham, he marched to Bourne.

"The next night," says Leofric the deacon, or rather the monk who
paraphrased his saga in Latin prose,--"Hereward saw in his dreams a man
standing by him of inestimable beauty, old of years, terrible of
countenance, in all the raiment of his body more splendid than all things
which he had ever seen, or conceived in his mind; who threatened him with
a great club which he carried in his hand, and with a fearful doom, that
he should take back to his church all that had been carried off the night
before, and have them restored utterly, each in its place, if he wished to
provide for the salvation of his soul, and escape on the spot a pitiable
death. But when awakened, he was seized with a divine terror, and restored
in the same hour all that he took away, and so departed, going onward with
all his men."

So says Leofric, wishing, as may be well believed, to advance the glory of
St. Peter, and purge his master's name from the stain of sacrilege.
Beside, the monks of Peterborough, no doubt, had no wish that the world
should spy out their nakedness, and become aware that the Golden Borough
was stript of all its gold.

Nevertheless, truth will out. Golden Borough was Golden Borough no more.
The treasures were never restored; they went to sea with the Danes, and
were scattered far and wide,--to Norway, to Ireland, to Denmark; "all the
spoils," says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, "which reached the latter
country, being the pallium and some of the shrines and crosses; and many
of the other treasures they brought to one of the king's towns, and laid
them up in the church. But one night, through their carelessness and
drunkenness, the church was burned, with all that was therein. Thus was
the minster of Peterborough burned and pillaged. May Almighty God have
pity on it in His great mercy."

Hereward, when blamed for the deed, said always that he did it "because of
his allegiance to the monastery." Rather than that the treasures gathered
by Danish monks should fall into the hands of the French robbers, let them
be given to their own Danish kinsmen, in payment for their help to English
liberty.

But some of the treasure, at least, he must have surely given back, it so
appeased the angry shade of St. Peter. For on that night, when marching
past Stamford, they lost their way. "To whom, when they had lost their
way, a certain wonder happened, and a miracle, if it can be said that such
would be worked in favor of men of blood. For while in the wild night and
dark they wandered in the wood, a huge wolf met them, wagging his tail
like a tame dog, and went before them on a path. And they, taking the gray
beast in the darkness for a white dog, cheered on each other to follow him
to his farm, which ought to be hard by. And in the silence of the
midnight, that they might see their way, suddenly candles appeared,
burning, and clinging to the lances of all the knights,--not very bright,
however; but like those which the folk call _candelae nympharum_,--wills
of the wisp. But none could pull them off, or altogether extinguish them,
or throw them from their hands. And thus they saw their way, and went on,
although astonished out of mind, with the wolf leading them, until day
dawned, and they saw, to their great astonishment, that he was a wolf. And
as they questioned among themselves about what had befallen, the wolf and
the candles disappeared, and they came whither they had been minded,--
beyond Stamford town,--thanking God, and wondering at what had happened."

After which Hereward took Torfrida, and his child, and all he had, and
took ship at Bardeney, and went for Ely. Which when Earl Warrenne heard,
he laid wait for him, seemingly near Southery: but got nothing thereby,
according to Leofric, but the pleasure of giving and taking a great deal
of bad language; and (after his men had refused, reasonably enough, to
swim the Ouse and attack Hereward) an arrow, which Hereward, "_modicum
se inclinans_," stooping forward, says Leofric,--who probably saw the
deed,--shot at him across the Ouse, as the Earl stood cursing on the top
of the dike. Which arrow flew so stout and strong, that though it sprang
back from Earl Warrenne's hauberk, it knocked him almost senseless off his
horse, and forced him to defer his purpose of avenging Sir Frederic his
brother.

After which Hereward threw himself into Ely, and assumed, by consent of
all, the command of the English who were therein.




CHAPTER XXVII.

HOW THEY HELD A GREAT MEETING IN THE HALL OF ELY


There sat round the hall of Ely all the magnates of the East land and East
sea. The Abbot on his high seat; and on a seat higher than his, prepared
specially, Sweyn Ulfsson, King of Denmark and England. By them sat the
Bishops, Egelwin the Englishman and Christiern the Dane; Osbiorn, the
young Earls Edwin and Morcar, and Sweyn's two sons; and, it may be, the
sons of Tosti Godwinsson, and Arkill the great Thane, and Hereward
himself. Below them were knights, Vikings, captains, great holders from
Denmark, and the Prior and inferior officers of Ely minster. And at the
bottom of the misty hall, on the other side of the column of blue vapor
which went trembling up from the great heap of burning turf amidst, were
housecarles, monks, wild men from the Baltic shores, crowded together to
hear what was done in that parliament of their betters.

They spoke like free Danes; the betters from the upper end of the hall,
but every man as he chose. They were in full Thing; in parliament, as
their forefathers had been wont to be for countless ages. Their House of
Lords and their House of Commons were not yet defined from each other: but
they knew the rules of the house, the courtesies of debate; and, by
practice of free speech, had educated themselves to bear and forbear, like
gentlemen.

But the speaking was loud and earnest, often angry, that day. "What was to
be done?" was the question before the house.

"That depended," said Sweyn, the wise and prudent king, "on what could be
done by the English to co-operate with them." And what that was has been
already told.

"When Tosti Godwinsson, ye Bishops, Earls, Knights, and Holders, came to
me five years ago, and bade me come and take the kingdom of England, I
answered him, that I had not wit enough to do the deeds which Canute my
uncle did; and so sat still in peace. I little thought that I should have
lost in five years so much of those small wits which I confessed to, that
I should come after all to take England, and find two kings in it already,
both more to the English mind than me. While William the Frenchman is king
by the sword, and Edgar the Englishman king by proclamation of Danish
Earls and Thanes, there seems no room here for Sweyn Ulfsson."

"We will make room for you! We will make a rid road from here to
Winchester!" shouted the holders and knights.

"It is too late. What say you, Hereward Leofricsson, who go for a wise man
among men?"

Hereward rose, and spoke gracefully, earnestly, eloquently; but he could
not deny Sweyn's plain words.

"Sir Hereward beats about the bush," said Earl Osbiorn, rising when
Hereward sat down. "None knows better than he that all is over. Earl Edwin
and Earl Morcar, who should have helped us along Watling Street, are here
fugitives. Earl Gospatrick and Earl Waltheof are William's men now, soon
to raise the landsfolk against us. We had better go home, before we have
eaten up the monks of Ely."

Then Hereward rose again, and without an openly insulting word, poured
forth his scorn and rage upon Osbiorn. Why had he not kept to the
agreement which he and Countess Gyda had made with him through Tosti's
sons? Why had he wasted time and men from Dover to Norwich, instead of
coming straight into the fens, and marching inland to succor Morcar and
Edwin? Osbiorn had ruined the plan, and he only, if it was ruined.

"And who was I, to obey Hereward?" asked Osbiorn, fiercely.

"And who wert thou, to disobey me?" asked Sweyn, in a terrible voice.
"Hereward is right. We shall see what thou sayest to all this, in full
Thing at home in Denmark."

Then Edwin rose, entreating peace. "They were beaten. The hand of God was
against them. Why should they struggle any more? Or, if they struggled on,
why should they involve the Danes in their own ruin?"

Then holder after holder rose, and spoke rough Danish common sense. They
had come hither to win England. They had found it won already. Let them
take what they had got from Peterborough, and go.

Then Winter sprang up. "Take the pay, and sail off with it, without having
done the work? That would be a noble tale to carry home to your fair wives
in Jutland. I shall not call you niddering, being a man of peace, as all
know." Whereat all laughed; for the doughty little man had not a hand's
breadth on head or arm without its scar. "But if your ladies call you so,
you must have a shrewd answer to give, beside knocking them down."

Sweyn spoke without rising: "The good knight forgets that this expedition
has cost Denmark already nigh as much as Harold Hardraade's cost Norway.
It is hard upon the Danes, If they are to go away empty-handed as well as
disappointed."

"The King has right!" cried Hereward. "Let them take the plunder of
Peterborough as pay for what they have done, and what beside they would
have done if Osbiorn the Earl--Nay, men of England, let us be just!--what
they would have done if there had been heart and wit, one mind and one
purpose, in England. The Danes have done their best. They have shown
themselves what they are, our blood and kin. I know that some talk of
treason, of bribes. Let us have no more such vain and foul suspicions.
They came as our friends; and as our friends let them go, and leave us to
fight out our own quarrel to the last drop of blood."

"Would God!" said Sweyn, "thou wouldest go too, thou good knight. Here,
earls and gentlemen of England! Sweyn Ulfsson offers to every one of you,
who will come to Denmark with him, shelter and hospitality till better
times shall come."

Then arose a mixed cry. Some would go, some would not. Some of the Danes
took the proposal cordially; some feared bringing among themselves men who
would needs want land, of which there was none to give. If the English
came, they must go up the Baltic, and conquer fresh lands for themselves
from heathen Letts and Finns.

Then Hereward rose again, and spoke so nobly and so well, that all ears
were charmed.

They were Englishmen; and they would rather die in their own merry England
than conquer new kingdoms in the cold northeast. They were sworn, the
leaders of them, to die or conquer, fighting the accursed Frenchman. They
were bound to St. Peter, and to St. Guthlac, and to St. Felix of Ramsey,
and St. Etheldreda the holy virgin, beneath whose roof they stood, to
defend against Frenchmen the saints of England whom they despised and
blasphemed, whose servants they cast out, thrust into prison, and
murdered, that they might bring in Frenchmen from Normandy, Italians from
the Pope of Rome. Sweyn Ulfsson spoke as became him, as a prudent and a
generous prince; the man who alone of all kings defied and fought the
great Hardraade till neither could fight more; the true nephew of Canute
the king of kings: and they thanked him: but they would live and die
Englishmen.

And every Englishman shouted, "Hereward has right! We will live and die
fighting the French!"

And Sweyn Ulfsson rose again, and said with a great oath, "That if there
had been three such men as Hereward in England, all would have gone well."

Hereward laughed. "Thou art wrong for once, wise king. We have failed,
just because there were a dozen men in England as good as me, every man
wanting his own way; and too many cooks have spoiled the broth. What we
wanted is, not a dozen men like me, but one like thee, to take us all by
the back of the neck and shake us soundly, and say, 'Do that, or die!'"

And so, after much talk, the meeting broke up. And when it broke up, there
came to Hereward in the hall a noble-looking man of his own age, and put
his hand within his, and said,--

"Do you not know me, Hereward Leofricsson?"

"I know thee not, good knight, more pity; but by thy dress and carriage,
thou shouldest be a true Viking's son."

"I am Sigtryg Ranaldsson, now King of Waterford. And my wife said to me,
'If there be treachery or faint-heartedness, remember this,--that Hereward
Leofricsson slew the Ogre, and Hannibal of Gweek likewise, and brought me
safe to thee. And, therefore, if thou provest false to him, niddering thou
art; and no niddering is spouse of mine.'"

"Thou art Sigtryg Ranaldsson?" cried Hereward, clasping him in his arms,
as the scenes of his wild youth rushed across his mind. "Better is old
wine than new, and old friends likewise."

"And I, and my five ships, are thine to death. Let who will go back."

"They must go," said Hereward, half-peevishly. "Sweyn has right, and
Osbiorn too. The game is played out. Sweep the chessmen off the board, as
Earl Ulf did by Canute the king."

"And lost his life thereby. I shall stand by, and see thee play the last
pawn."

"And lose thy life equally."

"What matter? I heard thee sing,--

'A bed-death, a priest death,
A straw death, a cow death,
Such death likes not me!'

Nor likes it me either, Hereward Leofricsson."

So the Danes sailed away: but Sigtryg Ranaldsson and his five ships
remained.

Hereward went to the minster tower, and watched the Ouse flashing with
countless oars northward toward Southrey Fen. And when they were all out
of sight, he went back, and lay down on his bed and wept,--once and for
all. Then he arose, and went down into the hall to abbots and monks, and
earls and knights, and was the boldest, cheeriest, wittiest of them all.

"They say," quoth he to Torfrida that night, "that some men have gray
heads on green shoulders. I have a gray heart in a green body."

"And my heart is growing very gray, too," said Torfrida.

"Certainly not thy head." And he played with her raven locks.

"That may come, too; and too soon."

For, indeed, they were in very evil case.




CHAPTER XXVIII.

HOW THEY FOUGHT AT ALDRETH.


When William heard that the Danes were gone, he marched on Ely, as on an
easy prey.

Ivo Taillebois came with him, hungry after those Spalding lands, the rents
whereof Hereward had been taking for his men for now twelve months.
William de Warrenne was there, vowed to revenge the death of Sir Frederic,
his brother. Ralph Guader was there, flushed with his success at Norwich.
And with them all the Frenchmen of the east, who had been either expelled
from their lands, or were in fear of expulsion.

With them, too, was a great army of mercenaries, ruffians from all France
and Flanders, hired to fight for a certain term, on the chance of plunder
or of fiefs in land. Their brains were all aflame with the tales of
inestimable riches hidden in Ely. There were there the jewels of all the
monasteries round; there were the treasures of all the fugitive English
nobles; there were there--what was there not? And they grumbled, when
William halted them and hutted them at Cambridge, and began to feel
cautiously the strength of the place,--which must be strong, or Hereward
and the English would not have made it their camp of refuge.

Perhaps he rode up to Madingley windmill, and saw fifteen miles away,
clear against the sky, the long line of what seemed naught but a low
upland park, with the minster tower among the trees; and between him and
them, a rich champaign of grass, over which it was easy enough to march
all the armies of Europe; and thought Ely an easy place to take. But men
told him that between him and those trees lay a black abyss of mud and
peat and reeds, Haddenham fen and Smithy fen, with the deep sullen West
water or "Ald-reche" of the Ouse winding through them. The old Roman road
was sunk and gone long since under the bog, whether by English neglect, or
whether (as some think) by actual and bodily sinking of the whole land.
The narrowest space between dry land and dry land was a full half-mile;
and how to cross that half-mile, no man knew.

What were the approaches on the west? There were none. Beyond Earith,
where now run the great washes of the Bedford Level, was a howling
wilderness of meres, seas, reed-ronds, and floating alder-beds, through
which only the fen-men wandered, with leaping-pole and log canoe.

What in the east? The dry land neared the island on that side. And it may
be that William rowed round by Burwell to Fordham and Soham, and thought
of attempting the island by way of Barraway, and saw beneath him a
labyrinth of islands, meres, fens, with the Ouse, now increased by the
volume of the Cam, lying deep and broad between Barraway and
Thetford-in-the-Isle; and saw, too, that a disaster in that labyrinth
might be a destruction.

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