Book: Hereward, The Last of the English

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So he determined on the near and straight path, through Long Stratton and
Willingham, down the old bridle-way from Willingham ploughed field,--every
village there, and in the isle likewise, had and has still its "field," or
ancient clearing of ploughed land,--and then to try that terrible
half-mile, with the courage and wit of a general to whom human lives were
as those of the gnats under the hedge.

So all his host camped themselves in Willingham field, by the old
earthwork which men now call Belsar's Hills; and down the bridle-way
poured countless men, bearing timber and fagots cut from all the hills,
that they might bridge the black half-mile.

They made a narrow, firm path through the reeds, and down to the brink of
the Ouse, if brink it could be called, where the water, rising and falling
a foot or two each tide, covered the floating peat for many yards before
it sunk into a brown depth of bottomless slime. They would make a bottom
for themselves by driving piles.

The piles would not hold; and they began to make a floating bridge with
long beams, says Leofric, and blown-up cattle-hides to float them.

Soon they made a floating sow, and thrust it on before them as they worked
across the stream; for they were getting under shot from the island.

Meanwhile the besieged had not been idle. They had thrown up, says
Leofric, a turf rampart on the island shore, and _antemuralia et
propugnacula,_--doubtless overhanging "hoardings," or scaffolds, through
the floor of which they could shower down missiles. And so they awaited
the attack, contenting themselves with gliding in and out of the reeds in
their canoes, and annoying the builders with arrows and cross-bow bolts.

At last the bridge was finished, and the sow safe across the West water,
and thrust in, as far as it would float, among the reeds on the high tide.
They in the fort could touch it with a pole.

The English would have destroyed it if they could. But Hereward bade them
leave it alone. He had watched all their work, and made up his mind to the
event.

"The rats have set a trap for themselves," he said to his men, "and we
shall be fools to break it up till the rats are safe inside."

So there the huge sow lay, black and silent, showing nothing to the enemy
but a side of strong plank, covered with hide to prevent its being burned.
It lay there for three hours, and Hereward let it lie.

He had never been so cheerful, so confident. "Play the man this day, every
one of you, and ere nightfall you will have taught the Norman once more
the lesson of York. He seems to have forgotten that. It is me to remind
him of it."

And he looked to his bow and to his arrows, and prepared to play the man
himself,--as was the fashion in those old days, when a general proved his
worth by hitting harder and more surely than any of his men.

At last the army was in motion, and Willingham field opposite was like a
crawling ants' nest. Brigade after brigade moved down to the reed beds,
and the assault began.

And now advanced along the causeway and along the bridge a dark column of
men, surmounted by glittering steel. Knights in complete mail, footmen in
leather coats and quilted jerkins; at first orderly enough, each under the
banner of his lord; but more and more mingled and crowded as they hurried
forward, each eager for his selfish share of the inestimable treasures of
Ely. They pushed along the bridge. The mass became more and more crowded;
men stumbled over each other, and fell off into the mire and the water,
calling vainly for help, while their comrades hurried on unheeding, in the
mad thirst for spoil.

On they came in thousands; and fresh thousands streamed out of the fields,
as if the whole army intended to pour itself into the isle at once.

"They are numberless," said Torfrida, in a serious and astonished voice,
as she stood by Hereward's side.

"Would they were!" said Hereward. "Let them come on, thick and threefold.
The more their numbers the fatter will the fish below be before to-morrow
morning. Look there, already!"

And already the bridge was swaying, and sinking beneath their weight. The
men in places were ankle deep in water. They rushed on all the more
eagerly, and filled the sow, and swarmed up to its roof.

Then, what with its own weight, what with the weight of the laden
bridge,--which dragged upon it from behind,--the huge sow began to tilt
backwards, and slide down the slimy bank.

The men on the top tried vainly to keep their footing, to hurl grapnels
into the rampart, to shoot off their quarrels and arrows.

"You must be quick, Frenchmen," shouted Hereward in derision, "if you mean
to come on board here."

The Normans knew that well; and as Hereward spoke two panels in the front
of the sow creaked on their hinges, and dropped landward, forming two
draw-bridges, over which reeled to the attack a close body of knights,
mingled with soldiers bearing scaling ladders.

They recoiled. Between the ends of the draw-bridges and the foot of the
rampart was some two fathoms' depth of black ooze. The catastrophe which
Hereward had foreseen was come, and a shout of derision arose from the
unseen defenders above.

"Come on,--leap it like men! Send back for your horses, knights, and ride
them at it like bold huntsmen!"

The front rank could not but rush on: for the pressure behind forced them
forward, whether they would or not. In a moment they were wallowing waist
deep, trampled on, and disappearing under their struggling comrades, who
disappeared in their turn.

"Look, Torfrida! If they plant their scaling ladders, it will be on a
foundation of their comrades' corpses."

Torfrida gave one glance through the openings of the hoarding, upon the
writhing mass below, and turned away in horror. The men were not so
merciful. Down between the hoarding-beams rained stones, javelins, arrows,
increasing the agony and death. The scaling ladders would not stand in the
mire. If they had stood a moment, the struggles of the dying would have
thrown them down; and still fresh victims pressed on from behind, shouting
"Dex Aie! On to the gold of Ely!" And still the sow, under the weight,
slipped further and further back into the stream, and the foul gulf
widened between besiegers and besieged.

At last one scaling ladder was planted upon the bodies of the dead, and
hooked firmly on the gunwale of the hoarding. Ere it could be hurled off
again by the English, it was so crowded with men that even Hereward's
strength was insufficient to lift it off. He stood at the top, ready to
hew down the first comer; and he hewed him down.

But the Normans were not to be daunted. Man after man dropped dead from
the ladder top,--man after man took his place; sometimes two at a time;
sometimes scrambling over each other's backs.

The English, even in the insolence of victory, cheered them with honest
admiration. "You are fellows worth fighting, you French!"

"So we are," shouted a knight, the first and last who crossed that
parapet; for, thrusting Hereward back with a blow of his sword-hilt, he
staggered past him over the hoarding, and fell on his knees.

A dozen men were upon him; but he was up again and shouting,--

"To me, men-at-arms! A Dade! a Dade!" But no man answered.

"Yield!" quoth Hereward.

Sir Dade answered by a blow on Hereward's helmet, which felled the chief
to his knees, and broke the sword into twenty splinters.

"Well hit," said Hereward, as he rose. "Don't touch him, men! this is my
quarrel now. Yield, sir! you have done enough for your honor. It is
madness to throw away your life."

The knight looked round on the fierce ring of faces, in the midst of which
he stood alone.

"To none but Hereward."

"Hereward am I."

"Ah," said the knight, "had I but hit a little harder!"

"You would have broke your sword into more splinters. My armor is
enchanted. So yield like a reasonable and valiant man."

"What care I?" said the knight, stepping on to the earthwork, and sitting
down quietly. "I vowed to St. Mary and King William that into Ely I would
get this day; and in Ely I am; so I have done my work."

"And now you shall taste--as such a gallant knight deserves--the
hospitality of Ely."

It was Torfrida who spoke.

"My husband's prisoners are mine; and I, when I find them such
_prudhommes_ as you are, have no lighter chains for them than that
which a lady's bower can afford."

Sir Dade was going to make an equally courteous answer, when over and
above the shouts and curses of the combatants rose a yell so keen, so
dreadful, as made all hurry forward to the rampart.

That which Hereward had foreseen was come at last. The bridge, strained
more and more by its living burden, and by the falling tide, had
parted,--not at the Ely end, where the sliding of the sow took off the
pressure,--but at the end nearest the camp. One sideway roll it gave, and
then, turning over, engulfed in that foul stream the flower of Norman
chivalry; leaving a line--a full quarter of a mile in length--of wretches
drowning in the dark water, or, more hideous still, in the bottomless
slime of peat and mud.

Thousands are said to have perished. Their armor and weapons were found at
times, by delvers and dikers, for centuries after; are found at times unto
this day, beneath the rich drained cornfields which now fill up that black
half-mile, or in the bed of the narrow brook to which the Westwater,
robbed of its streams by the Bedford Level, has dwindled down at last.

William, they say, struck his tents and departed forthwith, "groaning from
deep grief of heart;" and so ended the first battle of Aldreth.




CHAPTER XXIX.

HOW SIR DADE BROUGHT NEWS FROM ELY.


A month after the fight, there came into the camp at Cambridge, riding on
a good horse, himself fat and well-liking, none other than Sir Dade.

Boisterously he was received, as one alive from the dead; and questioned
as to his adventures and sufferings.

"Adventures I have had, and strange ones; but for sufferings, instead of
fetter-galls, I bring back, as you see, a new suit of clothes; instead of
an empty and starved stomach, a surfeit from good victuals and good
liquor; and whereas I went into Ely on foot, I came out on a fast
hackney."

So into William's tent he went; and there he told his tale.

"So, Dade, my friend?" quoth the Duke, in high good humor, for he loved
Dade, "you seem to have been in good company?"

"Never in better, Sire, save in your presence. Of the earls and knights in
Ely, all I can say is, God's pity that they are rebels, for more gallant
and courteous knights or more perfect warriors never saw I, neither in
Normandy nor at Constantinople, among the Varangers themselves."

"Eh! and what are the names of these gallants; for you have used your eyes
and ears, of course?"

"Edwin and Morcar, the earls,--two fine young lads."

"I know it. Go on"; and a shade passed over William's brow, as he thought
of his own falsehood, and his fair Constance, weeping in vain for the fair
bridegroom whom he had promised to her.

"Siward Barn, as they call him, the boy Orgar, and Thurkill Barn. Those
are the knights. Egelwin, bishop of Durham, is there too; and besides them
all, and above them all, Hereward. The like of that knight I may have
seen. His better saw I never."

"Sir fool!" said Earl Warrenne, who had not yet--small blame to
him--forgotten his brother's death. "They have soused thy brains with
their muddy ale, till thou knowest not friend from foe. What! hast thou to
come hither praising up to the King's Majesty such an outlawed villain as
that, with whom no honest knight would keep company?"

"If you, Earl Warrenne, ever found Dade drunk or lying, it is more than
the King here has done."

"Let him speak, Earl," said William. "I have not an honester man in my
camp; and he speaks for my information, not for yours."

"Then for yours will I speak, Sir King. These men treated me knightly, and
sent me away without ransom."

"They had an eye to their own profit, it seems," grumbled the Earl.

"But force me they did to swear on the holy Gospels that I should tell
your Majesty the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And I
keep my oath," quoth Dade.

"Go on, then, without fear or favor. Are there any other men of note in
the island!"

"No."

"Are they in want of provisions?"

"Look how they have fattened me."

"What do they complain of?"

"I will tell you, Sir King. The monks, like many more, took fright at the
coming over of our French men of God to set right all their filthy,
barbarous ways; and that is why they threw Ely open to the rebels."

"I will be even with the sots," quoth William.

"However, they think that danger blown over just now; for they have a
story among them, which, as my Lord the King never heard before, he may as
well hear now."

"Eh?"

"How your Majesty should have sent across the sea a whole shipload of
French monks."

"That have I, and will more, till I reduce these swine into something like
obedience to his Holiness of Rome."

"Ah, but your Majesty has not heard how one Bruman, a valiant English
knight, was sailing on the sea and caught those monks. Whereon he tied a
great sack to the ship's head, and cut the bottom out, and made every one
of those monks get into that sack and so fall through into the sea;
whereby he rid the monks of Ely of their rivals."

"Pish! why tell me such an old-wives' fable, knight?"

"Because the monks believe that old-wives' fable, and are stout-hearted
and stiff-necked accordingly."

"The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church," said William's chaplain,
a pupil and friend of Lanfranc; "and if these men of Belial drowned every
man of God in Normandy, ten would spring up in their places to convert
this benighted and besotted land of Simonites and Balaamites, whose
priests, like the brutes which perish, scruple not to defile themselves
and the service of the altar with things which they impudently call their
wives."

"We know that, good chaplain," quoth William, impatiently. He had enough
of that language from Lanfranc himself; and, moreover, was thinking more
of the Isle of Ely than of the celibacy of the clergy.

"Well, Sir Dade?"

"So they have got together all their kin; for among these monks every one
is kin to a Thane, or Knight, or even an Earl. And there they are, brother
by brother, cousin by cousin, knee to knee, and back to back, like a pack
of wolves, and that in a hold which you will not enter yet awhile."

"Does my friend Dade doubt his Duke's skill at last?"

"Sir Duke,--Sir King I mean now, for King you are and deserve to be,--I
know what you can do. I remember how we took England at one blow on Senlac
field; but see you here, Sir King. How will you take an island where four
kings such as you (if the world would hold four such at once) could not
stop one churl from ploughing the land, or one bird-catcher from setting
lime-twigs?"

"And what if I cannot stop the bird-catchers? Do they expect to lime
Frenchmen as easily as sparrows?"

"Sparrows! It is not sparrows that I have been fattening on this last
month. I tell you, Sire, I have seen wild-fowl alone in that island enough
to feed them all the year round. I was there in the moulting-time, and saw
them take,--one day one hundred, one two hundred; and once, as I am a
belted knight, a thousand duck out of one single mere. There is a wood
there, with herons sprawling about the tree-tops,--I did not think there
were so many in the world,--and fish for Lent and Fridays in every puddle
and leat, pike and perch, tench and eels, on every old-wife's table; while
the knights think scorn of anything worse than smelts and burbot."

"Splendeur Dex!" quoth William, who, Norman-like, did not dislike a good
dinner. "I must keep Lent in Ely before I die."

"Then you had best make peace with the burbot-eating knights, my lord."

"But have they flesh-meat?"

"The isle is half of it a garden,--richer land, they say, is none in these
realms, and I believe it; but, besides that, there is a deer-park there
with a thousand head in it, red and fallow; and plenty of swine in woods,
and sheep, and cattle; and if they fail, there are plenty more to be got,
they know where."

"They know where? Do you, Sir Knight?" asked William, keenly.

"Out of every little Island in their fens, for forty miles on end. There
are the herds fattening themselves on the richest pastures in the land,
and no man needing to herd them, for they are all safe among dikes and
meres."

"I will make my boats sweep their fens clear of every head--"

"Take care, my Lord King, lest never a boat come back from that errand.
With their narrow flat-bottomed punts, cut out of a single log, and their
leaping-poles, wherewith they fly over dikes of thirty feet in
width,--they can ambuscade in those reed-beds and alder-beds, kill whom
they will, and then flee away through the marsh like so many horse-flies.
And if not, one trick have they left, which they never try save when
driven into a corner; but from that, may all saints save us!"

"What then?"

"Firing the reeds."

"And destroying their own cover?"

"True: therefore they will only do it in despair."

"Then to despair will I drive them, and try their worst. So these monks
are as stout rebels as the earls?"

"I only say what I saw. At the hall-table there dined each day maybe some
fifty belted knights, with every one a monk next to him; and at the high
table the abbot, and the three earls, and Hereward and his lady, and
Thurkill Barn. And behind each knight, and each monk likewise, hung
against the wall lance and shield, helmet and hauberk, sword and axe."

"To monk as well as knight?"

"As I am a knight myself; and were as well used, too, for aught I saw. The
monks took turns with the knights as sentries, and as foragers, too; and
the knights themselves told me openly, the monks were as good men as
they."

"As wicked, you mean," groaned the chaplain. "O, accursed and bloodthirsty
race, why does not the earth open and swallow you, with Korah, Dathan, and
Abiram?"

"They would not mind," quoth Dade. "They are born and bred in the
bottomless pit already. They would jump over, or flounder out, as they do
to their own bogs every day."

"You speak irreverently, my friend," quoth William.

"Ask those who are in camp, and not me. As for whither they went, or how,
the English were not likely to tell me. All I know is, that I saw fresh
cattle come every few days, and fresh farms burnt, too, on the Norfolk
side. There were farms burning last night only, between here and
Cambridge. Ask your sentinels on the Rech-dike how that came about!"

"I can answer that," quoth a voice from the other end of the tent. "I was
on the Rech-dike last night, close down to the fen,--worse luck and shame
for me."

"Answer, then!" quoth William, with one of his horrible oaths, glad to
have some one on whom he could turn his rage and disappointment.

"There came seven men in a boat up from Ely yestereven, and five of them
were monks; they came up from Burwell fen, and plundered and burnt Burwell
town."

"And where were all you mighty men of war?"

"Ten of us ran down to stop them, with Richard, Earl Osbern's nephew, at
their head. The villains got to the top of the Rech-dike, and made a
stand, and before we could get to them--"

"Thy men had run, of course."

"They were every one dead or wounded, save Richard; and he was fighting
single-handed with an Englishman, while the other six stood around, and
looked on."

"Then they fought fairly?" said William.

"As fairly, to do them justice, as if they had been Frenchmen, and not
English churls. As we came down along the dike, a little man of them steps
between the two, and strikes down their swords as if they had been two
reeds. 'Come!' cries he, 'enough of this. You are two _prudhommes_ well
matched, and you can fight out this any other day'; and away he and his
men go down the dike-end to the water."

"Leaving Richard safe?"

"Wounded a little,--but safe enough."

"And then?"

"We followed them to the boat as hard as we could; killed one with a
javelin, and caught another."

"Knightly done!" and William swore an awful oath, "and worthy of valiant
Frenchmen. These English set you the example of chivalry by letting your
comrade fight his own battle fairly, instead of setting on him all
together; and you repay them by hunting them down with darts, because you
dare not go within sword's-stroke of better men than yourselves. Go. I am
ashamed of you. No, stay. Where is your prisoner? For, Splendeur Dex! I
will send him back safe and sound in return for Dade, to tell the knights
of Ely that if they know so well the courtesies of war, William of Rouen
does too."

"The prisoner, Sire," quoth the knight, trembling, "is--is--"

"You have not murdered him?"

"Heaven forbid! but--"

"He broke his bonds and escaped?"

"Gnawed them through, Sire, as we suppose, and escaped through the mire in
the dark, after the fashion of these accursed frogs of Girvians."

"But did he tell you naught ere he bade you good morning?"

"He told as the names of all the seven. He that beat down the swords was
Hereward himself."

"I thought as much. When shall I have that fellow at my side?"

"He that fought Richard was one Wenoch."

"I have heard of him."

"He that we slew was Siward, a monk."

"More shame to you."

"He that we took was Azer the Hardy, a monk of Nicole--Licole,"--the
Normans could never say Lincoln.

"And the rest were Thurstan the Younger; Leofric the Deacon, Hereward's
minstrel; and Boter, the traitor monk of St. Edmund's."

"And if I catch them," quoth William, "I will make an abbot of every one
of them."

"Sire?" quoth the chaplain, in a deprecating tone.




CHAPTER XXX.

HOW HEREWARD PLAYED THE POTTER; AND HOW HE CHEATED THE KING.


They of Ely were now much straitened, being shut in both by land and
water; and what was to be done, either by themselves or by the king, they
knew not. Would William simply starve them; or at least inflict on them so
perpetual a Lent,--for of fish there could be no lack, even if they ate or
drove away all the fowl,--as would tame down their proud spirits; which a
diet of fish and vegetables, from some ludicrous theory of monastic
physicians, was supposed to do? [Footnote: The Cornish--the stoutest,
tallest, and most prolific race of the South--live on hardly anything else
but fish and vegetables.] Or was he gathering vast armies, from they knew
not whence, to try, once and for all, another assault on the island,--it
might be from several points at once?

They must send out a spy, and find out news from the outer world, if news
were to be gotten. But who would go?

So asked the bishop, and the abbot, and the earls, in council in the
abbot's lodging.

Torfrida was among them. She was always among them now. She was their
Alruna-wife, their Vala, their wise woman, whose counsels all received as
more than human.

"I will go," said she, rising up like a goddess on Olympus. "I will cut
off my hair, and put on boy's clothes, and smirch myself brown with walnut
leaves; and I will go. I can talk their French tongue. I know their French
ways; and as for a story to cover my journey and my doings, trust a
woman's wit to invent that."

They looked at her, with delight in her courage, but with doubt.

"If William's French grooms got hold of you, Torfrida, it would not be a
little walnut brown which would hide you," said Hereward. "It is like you
to offer,--worthy of you, who have no peer."

"That she has not," quoth churchmen and soldiers alike.

"But--to send you would be to send Hereward's wrong half. The right half
of Hereward is going; and that is, himself."

"Uncle, uncle!" said the young earls, "send Winter, Geri, Leofwin Prat,
any of your fellows: but not yourself. If we lose you, we lose our head
and our king."

And all prayed Hereward to let any man go, rather than himself.

"I am going, lords and knights; and what Hereward says he does. It is one
day to Brandon. It may be two days back; for if I miscarry,--as I most
likely shall,--I must come home round about. On the fourth day, you shall
hear of me or from me. Come with me, Torfrida."

And he strode out.

He cropped his golden locks, he cropped his golden beard; and Torfrida
cried, as she cropped them, half with fear for him, half for sorrow over
his shorn glories.

"I am no Samson, my lady; my strength lieth not in my locks. Now for some
rascal's clothes,--as little dirty as you can get me, for fear of
company."

And Hereward put on filthy garments, and taking mare Swallow with him, got
into a barge and went across the river to Soham.

He could not go down the Great Ouse, and up the Little Ouse, which was his
easiest way, for the French held all the river below the isle; and,
beside, to have come straight from Ely might cause suspicion. So he went
down to Fordham, and crossed the Lark at Mildenhall; and just before he
got to Mildenhall, he met a potter carrying pots upon a pony.

"Halt, my stout fellow," quoth he, "and put thy pots on my mare's back."

"The man who wants them must fight for them," quoth that stout churl,
raising a heavy staff.

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