Book: Hereward, The Last of the English

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It might seem strange that William, Taillebois, Guader, Warrenne,
short-spoken, hard-headed, hard-swearing warriors, could allow,
complacently, a smooth churchman to dawdle on like this, counting his
periods on his fingers, and seemingly never coming to the point.

But they knew well, that the churchman was a far cunninger, as well as a
more learned, man than themselves. They knew well that they could not
hurry him, and that they need not; that he would make his point at last,
hunting it out step by step, and letting them see how he got thither, like
a cunning hound. They knew that if he spoke, he had thought long and
craftily, till he had made up his mind; and that, therefore, he would very
probably make up their minds likewise. It was--as usual in that age--the
conquest, not of a heavenly spirit, though it boasted itself such, but of
a cultivated mind over brute flesh.

They might have said all this aloud, and yet the churchman would have gone
on, as he did, where he left off, with unaltered blandness of tone.

"To convert to other uses the goods of the Church,--to convert them to
profane uses would, I need not say, be a sacrilege as horrible to Heaven
as impossible to so pious a monarch--"

Ivo Taillebois winced. He had just stolen a manor from the monks of
Crowland, and meant to keep it.

"Church lands belonging to abbeys or sees, whose abbots or bishops are
contumaciously disobedient to the Holy See, or to their lawful monarch, he
being in the communion of the Church and at peace with the said Holy See.
If, therefore,--to come to that point at which my incapacity, through the
devious windings of my own simplicity, has been tending, but with halting
steps, from the moment that your Majesty deigned to hear--"

"Put in the spur, man!" said Ivo, tired at last, "and run the deer to
soil."

"Hurry no man's cattle, especially thine own," answered the churchman,
with so shrewd a wink, and so cheery a voice, that Ivo, when he recovered
from his surprise, cried,--

"Why, thou art a good huntsman thyself, I believe now."

"All things to all men, if by any means--But to return. If your Majesty
should think fit to proclaim to the recalcitrants of Ely, that unless they
submit themselves to your Royal Grace--and to that, of course, of His
Holiness, our Father--within a certain day, you will convert to other
uses--premising, to avoid scandal, that those uses shall be for the
benefit of Holy Church--all lands and manors of theirs lying without the
precincts of the Isle of Ely,--those lands being, as is known, large, and
of great value,--Quid plura? Why burden your exalted intellect by
detailing to you consequences which it has, long ere now, foreseen."

"----" quoth William, who was as sharp as the Italian, and had seen it
all. "I will make thee a bishop!"

"Spare to burden my weakness," said the chaplain; and slipt away into the
shade.

"You will take his advice?" asked Ivo.

"I will."

"Then I shall see that Torfrida burn at last."

"Burn her?" and William swore.

"I promised my soldiers to burn the witch with reeds out of Haddenham fen,
as she had burned them; and I must keep my knightly word."

William swore yet more. Ivo Taillebois was a butcher and a churl.

"Call me not butcher and churl too often, Lord King, ere thou hast found
whether thou needest me or not. Rough I may be, false was I never."

"That thou wert not," said William, who needed Taillebois much, and feared
him somewhat; and remarked something meaning in his voice, which made him
calm himself, diplomat as he was, instantly. "But burn Torfrida thou shalt
not."

"Well, I care not. I have seen a woman burnt ere now, and had no fancy for
the screeching. Beside, they say she is a very fair dame, and has a fair
daughter, too, coming on, and she may very well make a wife for a Norman."

"Marry her thyself."

"I shall have to kill Hereward first."

"Then do it, and I will give thee his lands."

"I may have to kill others before Hereward."

"You may?"

And so the matter dropped. But William caught Ivo alone after an hour, and
asked him what he meant.

"No pay, no play. Lord King, I have served thee well, rough and smooth."

"Thou hast, and hast been well paid. But if I have said aught hasty--"

"Pish, Majesty. I am a plain-spoken man, and like a plain-spoken master.
But, instead of marrying Torfrida or her daughter, I have more mind to her
niece, who is younger, and has no Hereward to be killed first,"

"Her niece? Who?"

"Lucia, as we call her,--Edwin and Morcar's sister,--Hereward's niece,
Torfrida's niece."

"No pay, no play, saidst thou?--so say I. What meant you by having to kill
others before Hereward?"

"Beware of Waltheof!" said Ivo.

"Waltheof? Pish! This is one of thy inventions for making me hunt every
Englishman to death, that thou mayest gnaw their bones."

"Is it? Then this I say more. Beware of Ralph Guader!"

"Pish!"

"Pish on, Lord King." Etiquette was not yet discovered by Norman barons
and earls, who thought themselves all but as good as their king, gave him
their advice when they thought fit, and if he did not take it, attacked
him with all their meinie. "Pish on, but listen. Beware of Roger!"

"And what more?"

"And give me Lucia. I want her. I will have her."

William laughed. "Thou of all men! To mix that ditch-water with that
wine?"

"They were mixed in thy blood, Lord King, and thou art the better man for
it, so says the world. Old wine and old blood throw any lees to the bottom
of the cask; and we shall have a son worthy to ride behind--"

"Take care!" quoth William.

"The greatest captain upon earth."

William laughed again, like Odin's self.

"Thou shalt have Lucia for that word."

"And thou shalt have the plot ere it breaks. As it will."

"To this have I come at last," said William to himself, as they parted.
"To murder these English nobles, to marry their daughters to my grooms.
Heaven forgive me! They have brought it upon themselves by contumacy to
Holy Church."

"Call my secretary, some one."

The Italian re-entered.

"The valiant and honorable and illustrious knight, Ivo Taillebois, Lord of
Holland and Kesteven, weds Lucia, sister of the late earls Edwin and
Morcar, now with the queen; and with, her, her manors. You will prepare
the papers.

"I am yours to death," said Ivo.

"To do you justice, I think thou wert that already. Stay--here--Sir
Priest--do you know any man who knows this Torfrida?"

"I do, Majesty," said Ivo. There is one Sir Ascelin, a man of Gilbert's,
in the camp."

"Send for him."

"This Torfrida," said William, "haunts me."

"Pray Heaven she have not bewitched your Majesty."

"Tut! I am too old a campaigner to take much harm by woman's sharpshooting
at fifteen score yards off, beside a deep stream between. No. The woman
has courage,--and beauty, too, you say?"

"What of that, O Prince?" said the Italian. "Who more beautiful--if report
be true--than those lost women who dance nightly in the forests with Venus
and Herodias,--as it may be this Torfrida has done many a time?"

"You priests are apt to be hard upon poor women."

"The fox found that the grapes were sour," said the Italian, laughing at
himself and his cloth, or at anything else by which he could curry favor.

"And this woman was no vulgar witch. That sort of personage suits
Taillebois's taste, rather than Hereward's."

"Hungry dogs eat dirty pudding," said Ivo, pertinently.

"The woman believed herself in the right. She believed that the saints of
heaven were on her side. I saw it in her attitude, in her gestures.
Perhaps she was right."

"Sire?" said both by-standers, in astonishment.

"I would fain see that woman, and see her husband too. They are folks
after my own heart. I would give them an earldom to win them."

"I hope that in that day you will allow your faithful servant Ivo to
retire to his ancestral manors in Anjou; for England will be too hot for
him. Sire, you know not this man,--a liar, a bully, a robber, a
swash-buckling ruffian, who--" and Ivo ran on with furious invective,
after the fashion of the Normans, who considered no name too bad for an
English rebel.

"Sir Ascelin," said William, as Ascelin came in, "you know Hereward?"

Ascelin bowed assent.

"Are these things true which Ivo alleges?"

"The Lord Taillebois may know best what manner of man he is since he came
into this English air, which changes some folks mightily," with a hardly
disguised sneer at Ivo; "but in Flanders he was a very perfect knight,
beloved and honored of all men, and especially of your father-in-law, the
great marquis."

"He is a friend of yours, then?"

"No man less. I owe him more than one grudge, though all in fair quarrel;
and one, at least, which can only be wiped out in blood."

"Eh! What?"

Ascelin hesitated.

"Tell me, sir!" thundered William, "unless you have aught to be ashamed
of."

"It is no shame, as far as I know, to confess that I was once a suitor, as
were all knights for miles round, for the hand of the once peerless
Torfrida. And no shame to confess, that when Hereward knew thereof, he
sought me out at a tournament, and served me as he has served many a
better man before and since"

"Over thy horse's croup, eh?" said William.

"I am not a bad horseman, as all know, Lord King. But Heaven save me, and
all I love, from that Hereward. They say he has seven men's strength; and
I verily can testify to the truth thereof."

"That may be by enchantment," interposed the Italian.

"True, Sir Priest. This I know, that he wears enchanted armor, which
Torfrida gave him before she married him."

"Enchantments again," said the secretary.

"Tell me now about Torfrida," said William.

Ascelin told him all about her, not forgetting to say--what, according to
the chronicler, was a common report--that she had compassed Hereward's
love by magic arts. She used to practise sorcery, he said, with her
sorceress mistress, Richilda of Hainault. All men knew it. Arnoul,
Richilda's son, was as a brother to her. And after old Baldwin died, and
Baldwin of Mons and Richilda came to Bruges, Torfrida was always with her
while Hereward was at the wars.

"The woman is a manifest and notorious witch," said the secretary.

"It seems so indeed," said William, with something like a sigh. And so
were Torfrida's early follies visited on her; as all early follies are.
"But Hereward, you say, is a good knight and true?"

"Doubtless. Even when he committed that great crime at Peterborough--"

"For which he and all his are duly excommunicated by the Bishop," said the
secretary.

"He did a very courteous and honorable thing." And Ascelin told how he had
saved Alftruda, and instead of putting her to ransom, had sent her safe to
Gilbert.

"A very knightly deed. He should be rewarded for it."

"Why not burn the witch, and reward him with Alftruda instead, since your
Majesty is in so gracious a humor?" said Ivo.

"Alftruda! Who is she? Ay, I recollect her. Young Dolfin's wife. Why, she
has a husband already."

"Ay, but his Holiness at Rome can set that right. What is there that he
cannot do?"

"There are limits, I fear, even to his power. Eh, priest?"

"What his Holiness's powers as the viceroy of Divinity on earth might be,
did he so choose, it were irreverent to inquire. But as he condescends to
use that power only for the good of mankind, he condescends, like
Divinity, to be bound by the very laws which he has promulgated for the
benefit of his subjects; and to make himself only a life-giving sun, when
he might be a destructive thunderbolt."

"He is very kind, and we all owe him thanks," said Ivo, who had a confused
notion that the Pope might strike him dead with lightning, but was
good-natured enough not to do so. "Still, he might think of this plan; for
they say that the lady is an old friend of Hereward's, and not over fond
of her Scotch husband."

"That I know well," said William.

"And beside--if aught untoward should happen to Dolfin and his kin--"

"She might, with her broad lands, be a fine bait for Hereward. I see. Now,
do this, by my command. Send a trusty monk into Ely. Let him tell the
monks that we have determined to seize all their outlying lands, unless
they surrender within the week. And let him tell Hereward, by the faith
and oath of William of Normandy, that if he will surrender himself to my
grace, he shall have his lands in Bourne, and a free pardon for himself
and all his comrades."

The men assented, much against their will, and went out on their errand.

"You have played me a scurvy trick, sir," said Ascelin, "in advising the
king to give the Lady Alftruda to Hereward."

"What! Did you want her yourself? On my honor I knew not of it. But have
patience. You shall have her yet, and all her lands, if you will hear my
counsel, and keep it."

"But you would give her to Hereward!"

"And to you too. It is a poor bait, say these frogs of fenmen, that will
not take two pike running. Listen to me. I must kill this Hereward. I hate
him. I cannot eat my meat for thinking of him. Kill him I must."

"And so must I."

"Then we are both agreed. Let us work together, and never mind if one's
blood be old and the other's new. I am neither fool nor weakly, as thou
knowest."

Ascelin could not but assent.

"Then here. We must send the King's message. But we must add to it."

"That is dangerous."

"So is war; so is eating, drinking; so is everything. But we must not let
Hereward come in. We must drive him to despair. Make the messenger add but
one word,--that the king exempts from the amnesty Torfrida, on account
of----You can put it into more scholarly shape than I can."

"On account of her abominable and notorious sorceries; and demands that
she shall be given up forthwith to the ecclesiastical power, to be judged
as she deserves."

"Just so. And then for a load of reeds out of Haddenham fen."

"Heaven forbid!" said Ascelin, who had loved her once. "Would not
perpetual imprisonment suffice?"

"What care I? That is the churchmen's affair, not ours. But I fear we
shall not get her. Even so Hereward will flee with her,--maybe escape to
Flanders, or Denmark. He can escape through a rat's-hole if he will. And
then we are at peace. I had sooner kill him and have done with it: but out
of the way he must be put."

So they sent a monk in with the message, and commanded him to tell the
article about the Lady Torfrida, not only to Hereward, but to the abbot
and all the monks.

A curt and fierce answer came back, not from Hereward, but from Torfrida
herself,--that William of Normandy was no knight himself, or he would not
offer a knight his life, on condition of burning his lady.

William swore horribly. "What is all this about?" They told him--as much
as they chose to tell him. He was very wroth. "Who was Ivo Taillebois, to
add to his message? He had said that Torfrida should not burn." Taillebois
was stout; for he had won the secretary over to his side meanwhile. He had
said nothing about burning. He had merely supplied an oversight of the
king's. The woman, as the secretary knew, could not, with all deference to
his Majesty, be included in an amnesty. She was liable to ecclesiastical
censure, and the ecclesiastical courts. William might exercise his
influence on them in all lawful ways, and more, remit her sentence, even
so far as to pardon her entirely, if his merciful temper should so incline
him. But meanwhile, what better could he, Ivo, have done, than to remind
the monks of Ely that she was a sorceress; that she had committed grave
crimes, and was liable to punishment herself, and they to punishment also,
as her shelterers and accomplices? What he wanted was to bring over the
monks; and he believed that message had been a good stroke toward that. As
for Hereward, the king need not think of him. He never would come in
alive. He had sworn an oath, and he would keep it.

And so the matter ended.




CHAPTER XXXIII.

HOW THE MONKS OF ELY DID AFTER THEIR KIND.


William's bolt, or rather inextinguishable Greek fire, could not have
fallen into Ely at a more propitious moment.

Hereward was away, with a large body of men, and many ships, foraging in
the northeastern fens. He might not be back for a week.

Abbot Thurstan--for what cause is not said--had lost heart a little while
before, and fled to "Angerhale, taking with him the ornaments and treasure
of the church."

Hereward had discovered his flight with deadly fear: but provisions he
must have, and forth he must go, leaving Ely in charge of half a dozen
independent English gentlemen, each of whom would needs have his own way,
just because it was his own.

Only Torfrida he took, and put her hand into the hand of Ranald
Sigtrygsson, and said, "Thou true comrade and perfect knight, as I did by
thy wife, do thou by mine, if aught befall."

And Ranald swore first by the white Christ, and then by the head of
Sleipnir, Odin's horse, that he would stand by Torfrida till the last; and
then, if need was, slay her.

"You will not need, King Ranald. I can slay myself," said she, as she took
the Ost-Dane's hard, honest hand.

And Hereward went, seemingly by Mepal or Sutton. Then came the message;
and all men in Ely knew it.

Torfrida stormed down to the monks, in honest indignation, to demand that
they should send to William, and purge her of the calumny. She found the
Chapter-door barred and bolted. They were all gabbling inside, like
starlings on a foggy morning, and would not let her in. She hurried back
to Ranald, fearing treason, and foreseeing the effect of the message upon
the monks.

But what could Ranald do? To find out their counsels was impossible for
him, or any man in Ely. For the monks could talk Latin, and the men could
not. Torfrida alone knew the sacred tongue.

If Torfrida could but listen at the keyhole. Well,--all was fair in war.
And to the Chapter-house door she went, guarded by Ranald and some of his
housecarles, and listened, with a beating heart. She heard words now
incomprehensible. That men who most of them lived no better than their own
serfs; who could have no amount of wealth, not even the hope of leaving
that wealth to their children,--should cling to wealth,--struggle, forge,
lie, do anything for wealth, to be used almost entirely not for
themselves, but for the honor and glory of the convent,--indicates an
intensity of corporate feeling, unknown in the outer world then, or now.

The monastery would be ruined! Without this manor, without that wood,
without that stone quarry, that fishery,--what would become of them?

But mingled with those words were other words, unfortunately more
intelligible to this day,--those of superstition.

What would St. Etheldreda say? How dare they provoke her wrath? Would she
submit to lose her lands? She might do,--what might she not do? Her bones
would refuse ever to work a miracle again. They had been but too slack in
miracle-working for many years. She might strike the isle with barrenness,
the minster with lightning. She might send a flood up the fens. She
might--

William the Norman, to do them justice, those valiant monks feared not;
for he was man, and could but kill the body. But St. Etheldreda, a virgin
goddess, with all the host of heaven to back her,--might she not, by
intercession with powers still higher than her own, destroy both body and
soul in hell?

"We are betrayed. They are going to send for the Abbot from Angerhale,"
said Torfrida at last, reeling from the door, "All is lost."

"Shall we burst open the door and kill them all?" asked Ranald, simply.

"No, King,--no. They are God's men; and we have blood enough on our
souls."

"We can keep the gates, lest any go out to the King."

"Impossible. They know the isle better than we, and have a thousand arts."

So all they could do was to wait in fear and trembling for Hereward's
return, and send Martin Lightfoot off to warn him, wherever he might be.

The monks remained perfectly quiet. The organ droned, the chants wailed,
as usual; nothing interrupted the stated order of the services; and in the
hall, each day, they met the knights as cheerfully as ever. Greed and
superstition had made cowards of them,--and now traitors.

It was whispered that Abbot Thurstan had returned to the minster; but no
man saw him; and so three or four days went on.

Martin found Hereward after incredible labors, and told him all, clearly
and shrewdly. The man's manifest insanity only seemed to quicken his wit,
and increase his powers of bodily endurance.

Hereward was already on his way home; and never did he and his good men
row harder than they rowed that day back to Sutton. He landed, and hurried
on with half his men, leaving the rest to disembark the booty. He was
anxious as to the temper of the monks. He foresaw all that Torfrida had
foreseen. And as for Torfrida herself, he was half mad. Ivo Taillebois's
addition to William's message had had its due effect. He vowed even
deadlier hate against the Norman than he had ever felt before. He ascended
the heights to Sutton. It was his shortest way to Ely. He could not see
Aldreth from thence; but he could see Willingham field, and Belsar's
hills, round the corner of Haddenham Hill.

The sun was setting long before they reached Ely; but just as he sank into
the western fen, Winter stopped, pointing. "Was that the flash of arms?
There, far away, just below Willingham town. Or was it the setting sun
upon the ripple of some long water?"

"There is not wind enough for such a ripple," said one. But ere they could
satisfy themselves, the sun was down, and all the fen was gray.

Hereward was still more uneasy. If that had been the flash of arms, it
must have come off a very large body of men, moving in column, and on the
old straight road between Cambridge and Ely. He hastened on his men. But
ere they were within sight of the minster-tower, they were aware of a
horse galloping violently towards them through the dusk. Hereward called a
halt. He heard his own heart beat as he stopped. The horse was pulled up
short among them, and a lad threw himself off.

"Hereward? Thank God, I am in time!"

The voice was the voice of Torfrida.

"Treason!" she gasped.

"I knew it."

"The French are in the island. They have got Aldreth. The whole army is
marching from Cambridge. The whole fleet is coming up from Southrey. And
you have time--"

"To burn Ely over the monks' heads. Men! Get bogwood out of yon cottage,
make yourselves torches, and onward!"

Then rose a babel of questions, which Torfrida answered as she could. But
she had nothing to tell. "Clerks' cunning," she said bitterly, "was an
overmatch for woman's wit." She had sent out a spy: but he had not
returned till an hour since. Then he came back breathless, with the news
that the French army was on the march from Cambridge, and that, as he came
over the water at Alrech, he found a party of French knights in the fort
on the Ely side, talking peaceably with the monks on guard.

She had run up to the borough hill,--which men call Cherry Hill at this
day,--and one look to the northeast had shown her the river swarming with
ships. She had rushed home, put on men's clothes, hid a few jewels in her
bosom, saddled Swallow, and ridden for her life thither.

"And King Ranald?"

He and his men had gone desperately out towards Haddenham, with what
English they could muster; but all were in confusion. Some were getting
the women and children into boats, to hide them in the reeds. Others
battering the minster gates, vowing vengeance on the monks.

"Then Ranald will be cut off! Alas for the day that ever brought his brave
heart hither!"

And when the men heard that, a yell of fury and despair burst from all
throats.

Should they go back to their boats?

"No! onward," cried Hereward. "Revenge first, and safety after. Let us
leave nothing for the accursed Frenchmen but smoking ruins, and then
gather our comrades, and cut our way back to the north."

"Good counsel," cried Winter. "We know the roads, and they do not; and in
such a dark night as is coming, we can march out of the island without
their being able to follow us a mile."

They hurried on; but stopped once more, at the galloping of another horse.

"Who comes, friend or foe?"

"Alwyn, son of Orgar!" cried a voice under breath. "Don't make such a
noise, men! The French are within half a mile of you."

"Then one traitor monk shall die ere I retreat," cried Hereward, seizing
him by the throat.

"For Heaven's sake, hold!" cried Torfrida, seizing his arm. "You know not
what he may have to say."

"I am no traitor, Hereward; I have fought by your side as well as the
best; and if any but you had called Alwyn--"

"A curse on your boasting. Tell us the truth."

"The Abbot has made peace with the King. He would give up the island, and
St. Etheldreda should keep all her lands and honors. I said what I could;
but who was I to resist the whole chapter? Could I alone brave St.
Etheldreda's wrath?"

"Alwyn, the valiant, afraid of a dead girl!"

"Blaspheme not, Hereward! She may hear you at this moment! Look there!"
and pointing up, the monk cowered in terror, as a meteor flashed through
the sky.

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