Book: Hereward, The Last of the English

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There was nothing in the letter that he should not have read. She called
him her best and dearest friend, twice the savior of her life. What could
she do in return, but, at any risk to herself, try and save his life? The
French were upon him. The _posse comitatus_ of seven counties was
raising. "Northampton, Cambridge, Lincoln, Holland, Leicester, Huntingdon,
Warwick," were coming to the Bruneswald to root him out.

"Lincoln?" thought Hereward. "That must be Gilbert of Ghent, and Oger the
Breton. No! Gilbert is not coming, Sir Ascelin is coming for him. Holland?
That is my friend Ivo Taillebois. Well, we shall have the chance of paying
off old scores. Northampton? The earl thereof just now is the pious and
loyal Waltheof, as he is of Huntingdon and Cambridge. Is he going to join
young Fitz-Osbern from Warwick and Leicester, to root out the last
Englishman? Why not? That would be a deed worthy of the man who married
Judith, and believes in the powers that be, and eats dirt daily at
William's table."

Then he read on.

Ascelin had been mentioned, he remarked, three or four times in the
letter, which was long, as from one lingering over the paper, wishing to
say more than she dared. At the end was a hint of the reason:--

"O, that having saved me twice, you could save me once more. Know you that
Gospatrick has been driven from his earldom on charge of treason, and that
Waltheof has Northumbria in his place, as well as the parts round you? And
that Gospatrick is fled to Scotland again, with his sons,--my man among
them? And now the report comes, that my man is slain in battle on the
Border; and that I am to be given away,--as I have been given away twice
before,--to Ascelin. This I know, as I know all, not only from him of
Ghent, but from him of Peterborough, Ascelin's uncle."

Hereward laughed a laugh of cynical triumph,--pardonable enough in a
broken man.

"Gospatrick! the wittol! the woodcock! looking at the springe, and then
coolly putting his head therein. Throwing the hatchet after the helve!
selling his soul and never getting the price of it! I foresaw it, foretold
it, I believe to Alftruda herself,--foretold that he would not keep his
bought earldom three years. What a people we are, we English, if
Gospatrick is,--as he is,--the shrewdest man among us, with a dash of
canny Scots blood too. 'Among the one-eyed, the blind is king,' says
Torfrida, out of her wise ancients, and blind we are, if he is our best.
No. There is one better man left I trust, one that will never be fool
enough to put his head into the wolf's mouth, and trust the Norman, and
that is Hereward the outlaw."

And Hereward boasted to himself, at Gospatrick's expense, of his own
superior wisdom, till his eye caught a line or two, which finished the
letter.

"O that you would change your mind, much as I honor you for it. O that you
would come in to the king, who loves and trusts you, having seen your
constancy and faith, proved by so many years of affliction. Great things
are open to you, and great joys;--I dare not tell you what: but I know
them, if you would come in. You, to waste yourself in the forest, an
outlaw and a savage! Opportunity once lost, never returns; time flies
fast, Hereward, my friend, and we shall all grow old,--I think at times
that I shall soon grow old. And the joys of life will be impossible, and
nothing left but vain regrets."

"Hey?" said Hereward, "a very clerkly letter. I did not think she was so
good a scholar. Almost as good a one as Torfrida."

That was all he said; and as for thinking, he had the _posse comitatus_ of
seven counties to think of. But what could those great fortunes and joys
be, which Alftruda did not dare to describe?

She growing old, too? Impossible, that was woman's vanity. It was but two
years since she was as fair as a saint in a window. "She shall not marry
Ascelin. I will cut his head off. She shall have her own choice for once,
poor child."

And Hereward found himself worked up to a great height of paternal
solicitude for Alftruda, and righteous indignation against Ascelin. He did
not confess to himself that he disliked much, in his selfish vanity, the
notion of Alftruda's marrying any one at all. He did not want to marry her
himself,--of course not. But there is no dog in the manger so churlish on
such points as a vain man. There are those who will not willingly let
their own sisters, their own daughters, their own servants marry. Why
should a woman wish to marry any one but them?

But Hereward, however vain, was no dreamer or sluggard. He set to work,
joyfully, cheerfully, scenting battle afar off, like Job's war-horse, and
pawing for the battle. He sent back Alftruda's messenger, with this
answer:--

"Tell your lady that I kiss her hands and feet. That I cannot write, for
outlaws carry no pen and ink. But that what she has commanded, that will I
perform."

It is noteworthy, that when Hereward showed Torfrida (which he did
frankly) Alftruda's letter, he did not tell her the exact words of his
answer, and stumbled and varied much, vexing her thereby, when she,
naturally, wished to hear them word for word.

Then he sent out spies to the four airts of heaven. And his spies, finding
a friend and a meal in every hovel, brought home all the news he needed.

He withdrew Torfrida and his men into the heart of the forest,--no hint of
the place is given by the chronicler,--cut down trees, formed an abattis
of trunks and branches, and awaited the enemy.




CHAPTER XXXV.

HOW ABBOT THOROLD WAS PUT TO RANSOM.


Though Hereward had as yet no feud against "Bysshoppes and
Archbysshoppes," save Egelsin of Selsey, who had excommunicated him, but
who was at the other end of England, he had feud, as may be supposed,
against Thorold, Abbot of Peterborough, and Thorold feud likewise against
him. When Thorold had entered the "Golden Borough," hoping to fatten
himself with all its treasures, he had found it a smoking ruin, and its
treasures gone to Ely to pay Sweyn and his Danes. And such a "sacrilege,"
especially when he was the loser thereby, was the unpardonable sin itself
in the eyes of Thorold, as he hoped it might be in the eyes of St. Peter.
Joyfully therefore he joined his friend Ivo Taillebois; when, "with his
usual pompous verbosity," saith Peter of Blois, writing on this very
matter, he asked him to join in destroying Hereward.

Nevertheless, with all the Norman chivalry at their back, it behoved them
to move with caution; for (so says the chronicler) "Hereward had in these
days very many foreigners, as well as landsfolk, who had come to him to
practise and learn war, and fled from their masters and friends when they
heard of his fame; and some of them the king's courtiers, who had come to
see whether those things which they heard were true, whom Hereward
nevertheless received cautiously, on plighted troth and oath."

So Ivo Taillebois summoned all his men, and all other men's men who would
join him, and rode forth through Spalding and Bourne, having announced to
Lucia his bride that he was going to slay her one remaining relative; and
when she wept, cursed and kicked her, as he did once a week. After which
he came to Thorold of Peterborough.

So on the two worthies rode from Peterborough to Stamford, and from
Stamford into the wilderness, no man knows whither.

"And far they rode by bush and shaugh,
And far by moss and mire,"--

but never found a track of Hereward or his men. And Ivo Taillebois left
off boasting how he would burn Torfrida over a slow fire, and confined
himself to cursing; and Abbot Thorold left off warbling the song of Roland
as if he had been going to a second battle of Hastings, and wished himself
in warm bed at Peterborough.

But at the last they struck upon a great horse-track, and followed it at
their best pace for several miles, and yet no sign of Hereward.

"Catch an Englishman," quoth the abbot.

But that was not so easy. The poor folk had hidden themselves, like Israel
of old, in thickets and dens and caves of rocks, at the far-off sight of
the Norman tyrants, and not a living soul had appeared for twenty miles.
At last they caught a ragged wretch herding swine, and haled him up to
Ivo.

"Have you seen Hereward, villain?" asked he, through an interpreter.

"Nay."

"You lie. These are his fresh horse-tracks, and you must have seen him
pass."

"Eh?"

"Thrust out one of his eyes, and he will find his tongue."

It was done.

"Will you answer now?"

The poor wretch only howled.

"Thrust out the other."

"No, not that! Mercy: I will tell. He is gone by this four hours. How have
you not met him?"

"Fool! The hoofs point onward there."

"Ay,"--and the fellow could hardly hide a grin,--"but he had shod all his
horses backwards."

A storm of execration followed. They might be thrown twenty miles out of
their right road by the stratagem.

"So you had seen Hereward, and would not tell. Put out his other eye,"
said Taillebois, as a vent to his own feelings.

And they turned their horses' heads, and rode back, leaving the man blind
in the forest.

The day was waning now. The fog hung heavy on the treetops, and dripped
upon their heads. The horses were getting tired, and slipped and stumbled
in the deep clay paths. The footmen were more tired still, and, cold and
hungry, straggled more and more. The horse-tracks led over an open lawn of
grass and fern, with here and there an ancient thorn, and round it on
three sides thick wood of oak and beech, with under copse of holly and
hazel. Into that wood the horse-tracks led, by a path on which there was
but room for one horse at a time.

"Here they are at last!" cried Ivo. "I see the fresh footmarks of men, as
well as horses. Push on, knights and men at-arms."

The Abbot looked at the dark, dripping wood, and meditated.

"I think that it will be as well for some of us to remain here; and,
spreading our men along the woodside, prevent the escape of the villains.
_A moi, hommes d'armes!_"

"As you like. I will go in and bolt the rabbit; and you shall snap him up
as he comes out."

And Ivo, who was as brave as a bull-dog, thrust his horse into the path,
while the Abbot sat shivering outside. "Certain nobles of higher rank,"
says Peter de Blois, "followed his example, not wishing to rust their
armor, or tear their fine clothes, in the dank copse."

The knights and men-at-arms straggled slowly into the forest, some by the
path, some elsewhere, grumbling audibly at the black work before them. At
last the crashing of the branches died away, and all was still.

Abbot Thorold sat there upon his shivering horse, shivering himself as the
cold pierced through his wet mail; and as near an hour past, and no sign
of foe or friend appeared, he cursed the hour in which he took off the
beautiful garments of the sanctuary to endure those of the battle-field.
He thought of a warm chamber, warm bath, warm footcloths, warm pheasant,
and warm wine. He kicked his freezing iron feet in the freezing iron
stirrup. He tried to blow his nose with his freezing iron hand; but dropt
his handkerchief into the mud, and his horse trod on it. He tried to
warble the song of Roland; but the words exploded in a cough and a sneeze.
And so dragged on the weary hours, says the chronicler, nearly all day,
till the ninth hour. But never did they see coming out of the forest the
men who had gone in.

A shout from his nephew, Sir Ascelin, made all turn their heads. Behind
them, on the open lawn, in the throat between the woods by which they had
entered, were some forty knights, galloping toward them.

"Ivo?"

"No!" almost shrieked the Abbot. "There is the white-bear banner. It is
Hereward."

"There is Winter on his left," cried one. "And there, with the standard,
is the accursed monk, Ranald of Ramsey."

And on they came, having debouched from the wood some two hundred yards
off, behind a roll in the lawn, just far enough off to charge as soon as
they were in line.

On they came, two deep, with lances high over their shoulders, heads and
heels well down, while the green tufts flew behind them, "_A moi, hommes
d'armes!_" shouted the Abbot. But too late. The French turned right and
left. To form was impossible, ere the human whirlwind would be upon them.

Another half-minute and with a shout of "A bear! a bear. The Wake! the
Wake!" they were struck, ridden through, hurled over, and trampled into
the mud.

"I yield. Grace! I yield!" cried Thorold, struggling from under his horse;
but there was no one to whom to yield. The knights' backs were fifty yards
off, their right arms high in the air, striking and stabbing.

The battle was "_a l'outrance_." There was no quarter given that day.

"And he that came live out thereof
Was he that ran away."

The Abbot tried to make for the wood, but ere he could gain it, the
knights had turned, and one rode straight at him, throwing away a broken
lance, and drawing his sword.

Abbot Thorold may not have been the coward which Peter of Blois would have
him, over and above being the bully which all men would have him; but if
so, even a worm will turn; and so did the Abbot: he drew sword from thigh,
got well under his shield, his left foot forward, and struck one blow for
his life, and at the right place,--his foe's bare knee.

But he had to do with a warier man than himself. There was a quick jerk of
the rein; the horse swerved round, right upon him, and knocked him head
over heels; while his blow went into empty air.

"Yield or die!" cried the knight, leaping from his horse, and kneeling on
his head.

"I am a man of God, an abbot, churchman, Thorold."

"Man of all the devils!" and the knight lugged him up, and bound his arms
behind him with the abbot's own belt.

"Ahoi! Here! I have caught a fish. I have got the Golden Borough in my
purse!" roared he. "How much has St. Peter gained since we borrowed of him
last, Abbot? He will have to pay out the silver pennies bonnily, if he
wishes to get back thee."

"Blaspheme not, godless barbarian!" Whereat the knight kicked him.

"And you have Thorold the scoundrel, Winter?" cried Hereward, galloping
up. "And we have three or four more dainty French knights, and a viscount
of I know not where among them. This is a good day's work. Now for Ivo and
his tail."

And the Abbot, with four or five more prisoners, were hoisted on to their
own horses, tied firmly, and led away into the forest path.

"Do not leave a wounded man to die," cried a knight who lay on the lawn.

"Never we. I will come back and put you out of your pain," quoth some one.

"Siward! Siward Le Blanc! Are you in this meinie?" cried the knight in
French.

"That am I. Who calls?"

"For God's sake save him!" cried Thorold. "He is my own nephew, and I will
pay--"

"You will need all your money for yourself," said Siward the White, riding
back.

"Are you Sir Ascelin of Ghent?"

"That am I, your host of old."

"I wish I had met you in better company. But friends we are, and friends
must be."

And he dismounted, and did his best for the wounded man, promising to
return and fetch him off before night, or send yeomen to do so.

As he pushed on through the wood, the Abbot began to see signs of a fight;
riderless horses crashing through the copse, wounded men straggling back,
to be cut down without mercy by the English. The war had been "_a
l'outrance_" for a long while. None gave or asked quarter. The knights
might be kept for ransom: they had money. The wretched men of the lower
classes, who had none, were slain: as they would have slain the English.

Soon they heard the noise of battle; and saw horsemen and footmen
pell-mell, tangled in an abattis, from behind which archers and
cross-bowmen shot them down in safety.

Hereward dashed forward, with the shout of Torfrida; and at that the
French, taken in the flank, fled, and were smitten as they fled, hip and
thigh.

Hereward bade them spare a fugitive, and bring him to him.

"I give you your life; so run, and carry my message. That is Taillebois's
banner there forward, is it not?"

"Yes."

"Then go after him, and tell him,--Hereward has the Abbot of Burgh, and
half a dozen knights, safe by the heels. And unless Ivo clears the wood of
his men by nightfall, I will hang every one of them up for the crows
before morning."

Ivo got the message, and having had enough fighting for the day, drew off,
says the chronicler, for the sake of the Abbot and his fellow-captives.

Two hours after the Abbot and the other prisoners were sitting, unbound,
but unarmed, in the forest encampment, waiting for a right good meal, with
Torfrida bustling about them, after binding up the very few wounded among
their own men.

Every courtesy was shown them; and their hearts were lifted up, as they
beheld approaching among the trees great caldrons of good soup; forest
salads; red deer and roe roasted on the wood embers; spits of pheasants
and partridges, larks and buntings, thrust off one by one by fair hands
into the burdock leaves which served as platters; and last, but not least,
jacks of ale and wine, appearing mysteriously from a cool old stone
quarry. Abbot Thorold ate to his heart's content, complimented every one,
vowed he would forswear all Norman cooks and take to the greenwood
himself, and was as gracious and courtly as if he had been at the new
palace at Winchester.

And all the more for this reason,--that he had intended to overawe the
English barbarians by his polished Norman manners. He found those of
Hereward and Torfrida, at least, as polished as his own.

"I am glad you are content, Lord Abbot," said Torfrida; "I trust you
prefer dining with me to burning me, as you meant to do."

"I burn such peerless beauty! I injure a form made only for the courts of
kings! Heaven and all saints, knighthood and all chivalry, forbid. What
Taillebois may have said, I know not! I am no more answerable for his
intentions than I am for his parentage,--or his success this day. Let
churls be churls, and wood-cutters wood-cutters. I at least, thanks to my
ancestors, am a gentleman."

"And, as a gentleman, will of course contribute to the pleasure of your
hosts. It will surely please you to gratify us with one stave at least of
that song, which has made your name famous among all knights," holding out
a harp.

"I blush; but obey. A harp in the greenwood? A court in the wilderness!
What joy!"

And the vain Abbot took the harp, and said,--"These, if you will allow my
modesty to choose, are the staves on which I especially pride myself. The
staves which Taillefer--you will pardon my mentioning him--"

"Why pardon? A noble minstrel he was, and a brave warrior, though our foe.
And often have I longed to hear him, little thinking that I should hear
instead the maker himself."

So said Hereward; and the Abbot sang--those wondrous staves, where Roland,
left alone of all the Paladins, finds death come on him fast. And on the
Pyrenaean peak, beneath the pine, he lays himself, his "face toward the
ground, and under him his sword and magic horn, that Charles, his lord,
may say, and all his folk, The gentle count, he died a conqueror"; and
then "turns his eyes southward toward Spain, betakes himself to remember
many things; of so many lands which he conquered valiantly; of pleasant
France; of the men of his lineage; of Charlemagne, his lord, who brought
him up. He could not help to weep and sigh, but yet himself he would not
forget. He bewailed his sins, and prayed God's mercy:--True Father, who
ne'er yet didst lie, who raised St. Lazarus from death, and guarded Daniel
from the lions, guard my soul from all perils, for the sins which in my
life I did! His right glove then he offered to God; St. Gabriel took it
from his hand; on his arm the chief bowed down, with joined hands he went
unto his end. God sent down his angel cherubim, and St. Michael, whom men
call 'del peril.' Together with them, St. Gabriel, he came; the soul of
the count they bore to Paradise."

And the Abbot ended, sadly and gently, without that wild "Aoi!" the
war-cry with which he usually ends his staves. And the wild men of the
woods were softened and saddened by the melody; and as many as understood
French, said, when he finished, "Amen! so may all good knights die!"

"Thou art a great maker, Abbot! They told truths of thee. Sing us more of
thy great courtesy."

And he sang them the staves of the Olifant, the magic horn,--how Roland
would not sound it in his pride, and sounded it at Turpin's bidding, but
too late; and how his temples burst with that great blast, and Charles and
all his peers heard it through the gorges, leagues away in France. And
then his "Aoi" rang forth so loud and clear, like any trumpet blast, under
the oaken glades, that the wild men leaped to their feet, and shouted,
"Health to the gleeman! Health to the Abbot Thorold!"

"I have won them," thought the Abbot to himself. Strange mixture that man
must have been, if all which is told of him is true; a very typical
Norman, compact of cunning and ferocity, chivalry and poetry, vanity and
superstition, and yet able enough to help to conquer England for the Pope.

Then he pressed Hereward to sing, with many compliments; and Hereward
sang, and sang again, and all his men crowded round him as the outlaws of
Judaea may have crowded round David in Carmel or Hebron, to hear, like
children, old ditties which they loved the better the oftener they heard
them.

"No wonder that you can keep these knights together, if you can charm them
thus with song. Would that I could hear you singing thus in William's
hall."

"No more of that, Sir Abbot. The only music which I have for William is
the music of steel on steel."

Hereward answered sharply, because he was half of Thorold's mind.

"Now," said Torfrida, as it grew late, "we must ask our noble guest for
what he can give us as easily and well as he can song,--and that is news.
We hear naught here in the greenwood, and must throw oneself on the
kindness of a chance visitor."

The Abbot leapt at the bait, and told them news, court gossip, bringing in
great folks' names and his own, as often and as familiarly mingled as he
could.

"What of Richilda?" asked Torfrida.

"Ever since young Arnoul was killed at Cassel--"

"Arnoul killed?" shrieked Torfrida.

"Is it possible that you do not know?"

"How should I know, shut up in Ely for--years it seems."

"But they fought at Cassel three months before you went to Ely."

"Be it so. Only tell me. Arnoul killed!"

Then the Abbot told, not without feeling, a fearful story.

Robert the Frison and Richilda had come to open war, and Gerbod the
Fleming, Earl of Clueter, had gone over from England to help Robert.
William had sent Fitz-Osbern, Earl of Hereford, the scourge and tyrant of
the Welsh, to help Richilda. Fitz Osbern had married her, there and then.
She had asked help of her liege lord, the King of France, and he had sent
her troops. Robert and Richilda had fought on St. Peter's day,
1071,--nearly two years before, at Bavinchorum, by Cassel.

Richilda had played the heroine, and routed Robert's left wing, taken him
prisoner, and sent him off to St. Omer. Men said that she had done it by
her enchantments. But her enchantments betrayed her nevertheless. Fitz
Osbern, her bridegroom, fell dead. Young Arnoul had two horses killed
under him. Then Gerbod smote him to the ground, and Richilda and her
troops fled in horror. Richilda was taken, and exchanged for the Frison;
at which the King of France, being enraged, had come down and burnt St.
Omer. Then Richilda, undaunted, had raised fresh troops to avenge her son.
Then Robert had met them at Broqueroie by Mons, and smote them with a
dreadful slaughter. [Footnote: The place was called till late, and may be
now, "The Hedges of Death."] Then Richilda had turned and fled wildly into
a convent; and, so men said, tortured herself night and day with fearful
penances, if by any means she might atone for her great sins.

Torfrida heard, and laid her head upon her knees, and wept so bitterly,
that the Abbot entreated pardon for having pained her so much.

The news had a deep and lasting effect on her. The thought of Richilda
shivering and starving in the squalid darkness of a convent, abode by her
thenceforth. Should she ever find herself atoning in like wise for her
sorceries,--harmless as they had been; for her ambitions,--just as they
had been; for her crimes? But she had committed none. No, she had sinned
in many things: but she was not as Richilda. And yet in the loneliness and
sadness of the forest, she could not put Richilda from before the eyes of
her mind.

It saddened Hereward likewise. For Richilda he cared little. But that boy.
How he had loved him! How he had taught him to ride, and sing, and joust,
and handle sword, and all the art of war. How his own rough soul had been
the better for that love. How he had looked forward to the day when Arnoul
should be a great prince, and requite him with love. Now he was gone.
Gone? Who was not gone, or going? He seemed to himself the last tree in
the forest. When should his time come, and the lightning strike him down
to rot beside the rest? But he tost the sad thoughts aside. He could not
afford to nourish them. It was his only chance of life, to be merry and
desperate.

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