Book: Hereward, The Last of the English

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"Well!" said Hereward, ere they hapt themselves up for the night. "We owe
you thanks, Abbot Thorold, for an evening worthy of a king's court, rather
than a holly-bush."

"I have won him over," thought the Abbot.

"So charming a courtier,--so sweet a minstrel,--so agreeable a
newsmonger,--could I keep you in a cage forever, and hang you on a bough,
I were but too happy: but you are too fine a bird to sing in captivity. So
you must go, I fear, and leave us to the nightingales. And I will take for
your ransom--"

Abbot Thorold's heart beat high.

"Thirty thousand silver marks."

"Thirty thousand fiends!"

"My beau Sire, will you undervalue yourself? Will you degrade yourself? I
took Abbot Thorold, from his talk, to be a man who set even a higher value
on himself than other men set on him. What higher compliment can I pay to
your vast worth, than making your ransom high accordingly, after the
spirit of our ancient English laws? Take it as it is meant, beau Sire; be
proud to pay the money; and we will throw you Sir Ascelin into the
bargain, as he seems a friend of Siward's."

Thorold hoped that Hereward was drunk, and might forget, or relent; but he
was so sore at heart that he slept not a wink that night. But in the
morning he found, to his sorrow, that Hereward had been as sober as
himself.

In fine, he had to pay the money; and was a poor man all his days.

"Aha! Sir Ascelin," said Hereward apart, as he bade them all farewell with
many courtesies. "I think I have put a spoke in your wheel about the fair
Alftruda."

"Eh? How? Most courteous victor?"

"Sir Ascelin is not a very wealthy gentleman."

Ascelin laughed assent.

"Nudus intravi, nudus exeo--England; and I fear now, this mortal life
likewise."

"But he looked to his rich uncle the Abbot, to further a certain
marriage-project of his. And, of course, neither my friend Gilbert of
Ghent, nor my enemy William of Normandy, are likely to give away so rich
an heiress without some gratification in return."

"Sir Hereward knows the world, it seems."

"So he has been told before. And, therefore, having no intention that Sir
Ascelin, however worthy of any and every fair lady, should marry this one;
he took care to cut off the stream at the fountain-head. If he hears that
the suit is still pushed, he may cut off another head beside the
fountain's."

"There will be no need," said Ascelin, laughing again. "You have very
sufficiently ruined my uncle, and my hopes."

"My head?" said he, as soon as Hereward was out of hearing. "If I do not
cut off thy head ere all is over, there is neither luck nor craft left
among Normans. I shall catch the Wake sleeping some day, let him be never
so wakeful."




CHAPTER XXXVI.

HOW ALFTRUDA WROTE TO HEREWARD.


The weary months ran on, from summer into winter, and winter into summer
again, for two years and more, and neither Torfrida nor Hereward were the
better for them. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: and a sick heart is
but too apt to be a peevish one. So there were fits of despondency, jars,
mutual recriminations. "If I had not taken your advice, I should not have
been here." "If I had not loved you so well, I might have been very
differently off,"--and so forth. The words were wiped away the next hour,
perhaps the next minute, by sacred kisses; but they had been said, and
would be recollected, and perhaps said again.

Then, again, the "merry greenwood" was merry enough in the summer tide,
when shaughs were green, and

"The woodwele sang, and would not cease,
Sitting upon the spray.
So loud, it wakened Robin Hood
In the greenwood where he lay."

But it was a sad place enough, when the autumn fog crawled round the
gorse, and dripped off the hollies, and choked alike the breath and the
eyesight; when the air sickened with the graveyard smell of rotting
leaves, and the rain-water stood in the clay holes over the poached and
sloppy lawns.

It was merry enough, too, when they were in winter quarters in friendly
farm-houses, as long as the bright sharp frosts lasted, and they tracked
the hares and deer merrily over the frozen snows; but it was doleful
enough in those same farm-houses in the howling wet weather, when wind and
rain lashed in through unglazed window, and ill-made roof, and there were
coughs and colds and rheumatisms, and Torfrida ached from head to foot,
and once could not stand upright for a whole month together, and every
cranny was stuffed up with bits of board and rags, keeping out light and
air as well as wind and water; and there was little difference between the
short day and the long night; and the men gambled and wrangled amid clouds
of peat-reek, over draughtboards and chessmen which they had carved for
themselves, and Torfrida sat stitching and sewing, making and mending, her
eyes bleared with peat-smoke, her hands sore and coarse from continual
labor, her cheek bronzed, her face thin and hollow, and all her beauty
worn away for very trouble. Then sometimes there was not enough to eat,
and every one grumbled at her; or some one's clothes were not mended, and
she was grumbled at again. And sometimes a foraging party brought home
liquor, and all who could got drunk to drive dull care away; and Hereward,
forgetful of all her warnings, got more than was good for him likewise;
and at night she coiled herself up in her furs, cold and contemptuous; and
Hereward coiled himself up, guilty and defiant, and woke her again and
again with startings and wild words in his sleep. And she felt that her
beauty was gone, and that he saw it; and she fancied him (perhaps it was
only fancy) less tender than of yore; and then in very pride disdained to
take any care of her person, and said to herself, though she dare not say
it to him, that if he only loved her for her face, he did not love her at
all. And because she fancied him cold at times, she was cold likewise, and
grew less and less caressing, when for his sake, as well as her own, she
should have grown more so day by day.

Alas for them! there are many excuses. Sorrow may be a softening medicine
at last, but at first it is apt to be a hardening one; and that savage
outlaw life which they were leading can never have been a wholesome one
for any soul of man, and its graces must have existed only in the brains
of harpers and gleemen. Away from law, from self-restraint, from
refinement, from elegance, from the very sound of a church-going bell,
they were sinking gradually down to the level of the coarse men and women
whom they saw; the worse and not the better parts of both their characters
were getting the upper hand; and it was but too possible that after a
while the hero might sink into the ruffian, the lady into a slattern and a
shrew.

But in justice to them be it said, that neither of them had complained of
the other to any living soul. Their love had been as yet too perfect, too
sacred, for them to confess to another (and thereby confess to themselves)
that it could in any wise fail. They had each idolized the other, and been
too proud of their idolatry to allow that their idol could crumble or
decay.

And yet at last that point, too, was reached. One day they were wrangling
about somewhat, as they too often wrangled, and Hereward in his temper let
fall the words. "As I said to Winter the other day, you grow harder and
harder upon me."

Torfrida started and fixed on him wide, terrible, scornful eyes "So you
complain of me to your boon companions?"

And she turned and went away without a word. A gulf had opened between
them. They hardly spoke to each other for a week.

Hereward complained of Torfrida? What if Torfrida should complain of
Hereward? But to whom? Not to the coarse women round her; her pride
revolted from that thought;--and yet she longed for counsel, for
sympathy,--to open her heart but to one fellow-woman. She would go to the
Lady Godiva at Crowland, and take counsel of her, whether there was any
method (for so she put it to herself) of saving Hereward; for she saw but
too clearly that he was fast forgetting all her teaching, and falling back
to a point lower than that even from which she had raised him up.

To go to Crowland was not difficult. It was mid-winter. The dikes were all
frozen. Hereward was out foraging in the Lincolnshire wolds. So Torfrida,
taking advantage of his absence, proposed another foraging party to
Crowland itself. She wanted stuff for clothes, needles, thread, what not.
A dozen stout fellows volunteered at once to take her. The friendly monks
of Crowland would feast them royally, and send them home heaped with all
manner of good things; while as for meeting Ivo Taillebois's men, if they
had but three to one against them, there was a fair chance of killing a
few, and carrying off their clothes and weapons, which would be useful. So
they made a sledge, tied beef-bones underneath it, put Torfrida thereon,
well wrapped in deer and fox and badger skin, and then putting on their
skates, swept her over the fen to Crowland, singing like larks along the
dikes.

And Torfrida went in to Godiva, and wept upon her knees; and Godiva wept
likewise, and gave her such counsel as she could,--how if the woman will
keep the men heroic, she must keep herself not heroic only, but devout
likewise; how she herself, by that one deed which had rendered her name
famous then, and famous (though she never dreamt thereof) now, and it may
be to the end of time,--had once for all, tamed, chained, and as it were
converted, the heart of her fierce young lord; and enabled her to train
him in good time into the most wise, most just, most pious, of all King
Edward's earls.

And Torfrida said yes, and yes, and yes, and felt in her heart that she
knew all that already. Had not she, too, taught, entreated, softened,
civilized? Had not she, too, spent her life upon a man, and that man a
wolf's-head and a landless outlaw, more utterly than Godiva could ever
have spent hers on one who lived lapped in luxury and wealth and power?
Torfrida had done her best, and she had failed, or at least fancied in her
haste that she had failed.

What she wanted was, not counsel, but love. And she clung round the Lady
Godiva, till the broken and ruined widow opened all her heart to her, and
took her in her arms, and fondled her as if she had been a babe. And the
two women spoke few words after that, for indeed there was nothing to be
said. Only at last, "My child, my child," cried Godiva, "better for thee,
body and soul, to be here with me in the house of God, than there amid
evil spirits and deeds of darkness in the wild woods."

"Not a cloister, not a cloister," cried Torfrida, shuddering, and half
struggling to get away.

"It is the only place, poor wilful child, the only place this side the
grave, in which, we wretched creatures, who for our sins are women born,
can find aught of rest or peace. By us sin came into the world, and Eve's
curse lies heavy on us to this day, and our desire is to our lords, and
they rule over us; and when the slave can work for her master no more,
what better than to crawl into the house of God, and lay down our crosses
at the foot of His cross and die? You too will come here, Torfrida, some
day, I know it well. You too will come here to rest."

"Never, never," shrieked Torfrida, "never to these horrid vaults. I will
die in the fresh air! I will be buried under the green hollies; and the
nightingales as they wander up from my own Provence, shall build and sing
over my grave. Never, never!" murmured she to herself all the more
eagerly, because something within her said that it would come to pass.

The two women went into the church to Matins, and prayed long and
fervently. And at the early daybreak the party went back laden with good
things and hearty blessings, and caught one of Ivo Taillebois's men by the
way, and slew him, and got off him a new suit of clothes in which the poor
fellow was going courting; and so they got home safe into the Bruneswald.

But Torfrida had not found rest unto her soul. For the first time in her
life since she became the bride of Hereward, she had had a confidence
concerning him and unknown to him. It was to his own mother,--true. And
yet she felt as if she had betrayed him: but then had he not betrayed her?
And to Winter of all men?

It might have been two months afterwards that Martin Lightfoot put a
letter into Torfrida's hand.

The letter was addressed to Hereward; but there was nothing strange in
Martin's bringing it to his mistress. Ever since their marriage, she had
opened and generally answered the very few epistles with which her husband
was troubled.

She was going to open this one as a matter of course, when glancing at the
superscription she saw, or fancied she saw, that it was in a woman's hand.
She looked at it again. It was sealed plainly with a woman's seal; and she
looked up at Martin Lightfoot. She had remarked as he gave her the letter
a sly significant look in his face.

"What doest thou know of this letter?" she inquired sharply.

"That it is from the Countess Alftruda, whomsoever she may be."

A chill struck through her heart. True, Alftruda had written before, only
to warn Hereward of danger to his life,--and hers. She might be writing
again, only for the same purpose. But still, she did not wish that either
Hereward, or she, should owe Alftruda their lives, or anything. They had
struggled on through weal and woe without her, for many a year. Let them
do so without her still. That Alftruda had once loved Hereward she knew
well. Why should she not? The wonder was to her that every woman did not
love him. But she had long since gauged Alftruda's character, and seen in
it a persistence like her own, yet as she proudly hoped of a lower temper;
the persistence of the base weasel, not of the noble hound: yet the
creeping weasel might endure, and win, when the hound was tired out by his
own gallant pace. And there was a something in the tone of Alftruda's last
letter which seemed to tell her that the weasel was still upon the scent
of its game. But she was too proud to mistrust Hereward, or rather, to
seem to mistrust him. And yet--how dangerous Alftruda might be as a rival,
if rival she choose to be. She was up in the world now, free, rich, gay,
beautiful, a favorite at Queen Matilda's court, while she--

"How came this letter into thy hands?" asked she as carelessly as she
could.

"I was in Peterborough last night," said Martin, "concerning little
matters of my own, and there came to me in the street a bonny young page
with smart jacket on his back, smart cap on his head, and smiles and bows,
and 'You are one of Hereward's men,' quoth he."

"'Say that again, young jackanapes,' said I, 'and I'll cut your tongue
out,' whereat he took fright and all but cried. He was very sorry, and
meant no harm, but he had a letter for my master, and he heard I was one
of his men.

"Who told him that?"

"Well, one of the monks, he could not justly say which, or wouldn't, and
I, thinking the letter of more importance than my own neck, ask him
quietly into my friend's house. There he pulls out this and five silver
pennies, and I shall have five more if I bring an answer back: but to none
than Hereward must I give it. With that I calling my friend, who is an
honest woman, and nigh as strong in the arms as I am, ask her to clap her
back against the door, and pull out my axe."

"'Now,' said I, 'I must know a little more about this letter Tell me,
knave, who gave it thee, or I'll split thy skull.'

"The young man cries and blubbers; and says that it is the Countess
Alftruda, who is staying in the monastery, and that he is her serving man,
and that it is as much as my life is worth to touch a hair of his head,
and so forth,--so far so good.

"Then I asked him again, who told him I was my master's man?--and he
confessed that it was Herluin the prior,--he that was Lady Godiva's
chaplain of old, whom my master robbed of his money when he had the cell
of Bourne years agone. Very well, quoth I to myself, that's one more count
on our score against Master Herluin. Then I asked him how Herluin and the
Lady Alftruda came to know aught of each other? and he said that she had
been questioning all about the monastery without Abbot Thorold's
knowledge, for one that knew Hereward and favored him well. That was all I
could get from the knave, he cried so for fright. So I took his money and
his letter, warning him that if be betrayed me, there were those would
roast him alive before he was done with me. And so away over the town
wall, and ran here five-and-twenty miles before breakfast, and thought it
better as you see to give the letter to my lady first."

"You have been officious," said Torfrida, coldly. "'Tis addressed to your
master. Take it to him. Go."

Martin Lightfoot whistled and obeyed, while Torfrida walked away proudly
and silently with a beating heart.

Again Godiva's words came over her. Should she end in the convent of
Crowland? And suspecting, fearing, imagining all sorts of baseless
phantoms, she hardened her heart into a great hardness.

Martin had gone with the letter, and Torfrida never heard any more of it.

So Hereward had secrets which he would not tell to her. At last!

That, at least, was a misery which she would not confide to Lady Godiva,
or to any soul on earth.

But a misery it was. Such a misery as none can delineate, save those who
have endured it themselves, or had it confided to them by another. And
happy are they to whom neither has befallen.

She wandered on and into the wild-wood, and sat down by a spring. She
looked in it--her only mirror--at her wan, coarse face, with wild black
elf-locks hanging round it, and wondered whether Alftruda, in her luxury
and prosperity, was still so very beautiful. Ah, that that fountain were
the fountain of Jouvence, the spring of perpetual youth, which all
believed in those days to exist somewhere,--how would she plunge into it,
and be young and fair once more!

No! she would not! She had lived her life, and lived it well, gallantly,
lovingly, heroically. She had given that man her youth, her beauty, her
wealth, her wit. He should not have them a second time. He had had his
will of her. If he chose to throw her away when he had done with her, to
prove himself base at last, unworthy of all her care, her counsels, her
training,--dreadful thought! To have lived to keep that man for her own,
and just when her work seemed done, to lose him! No, there was worse than
that. To have lived that she might make that man a perfect knight, and
just when her work seemed done, to see him lose himself!

And she wept till she could weep no more. Then she washed away her tears
in that well. Had it been in Greece of old, that well would have become a
sacred well thenceforth, and Torfrida's tears have changed into
forget-me-nots, and fringed its marge with azure evermore.

Then she went back, calm, all but cold: but determined not to betray
herself, let him do what he would. Perhaps it was all a mistake, a fancy.
At least she would not degrade him, and herself, by showing suspicion. It
would be dreadful, shameful to herself, wickedly unjust to him, to accuse
him, were he innocent after all.

Hereward, she remarked, was more kind to her now. But it was a kindness
which she did not like. It was shy, faltering, as of a man guilty and
ashamed; and she repelled it as much as she dared, and then, once or
twice, returned it passionately, madly, in hopes--

But he never spoke a word of that letter.

After a dreadful month, Martin came mysteriously to her again. She
trembled, for she had remarked in him lately a strange change. He had lost
his usual loquacity and quaint humor; and had fallen back into that sullen
taciturnity, which, so she heard, he had kept up in his youth. He, too,
must know evil which he dared not tell.

"There is another letter come. It came last night," said he.

"What is that to thee or me? My lord has his state secrets. Is it for us
to pry into them? Go!"

"I thought--I thought--"

"Go, I say!"

"That your ladyship might wish for a guide to Crowland."

"Crowland?" almost shrieked Torfrida, for the thought of Crowland had
risen in her own wretched mind instantly and involuntarily. "Go, madman!"

Martin went. Torfrida paced madly up and down the farmhouse. Then she
settled herself into fierce despair.

There was a noise of trampling horses outside. The men were arming and
saddling, seemingly for a raid.

Hereward hurried in for his armor. When he saw Torfrida, he blushed
scarlet.

"You want your arms," said she, quietly; "let me fetch them."

"No, never mind. I can harness myself; I am going southwest, to pay
Taillebois a visit. I am in a great hurry, I shall be back in three days.
Then--good-by."

He snatched his arms off a perch, and hurried out again, dragging them on.
As he passed her, he offered to kiss her; she put him back, and helped him
on with his armor, while he thanked her confusedly.

"He was as glad not to kiss me, after all!"

She looked after him as he stood, his hand on his horse's withers. How
noble he looked! And a great yearning came over her. To throw her arms
round his neck once, and then to stab herself, and set him free, dying, as
she had lived, for him.

Two bonny boys were wrestling on the lawn, young outlaws who had grown up
in the forest with ruddy cheeks and iron limbs.

"Ah, Winter!" she heard him say, "had I had such a boy as that!--"

She heard no more. She turned away, her heart dead within her. She knew
all that these words implied, in days when the possession of land was
everything to the free man; and the possession of a son necessary, to pass
that land on in the ancestral line. Only to have a son; only to prevent
the old estate passing, with an heiress, into the hands of strangers, what
crimes did not men commit in those days, and find themselves excused for
them by public opinion. And now,--her other children (if she ever had any)
had died in childhood; the little Torfrida, named after herself, was all
that she had brought to Hereward; and he was the last of his house. In him
the race of Leofric, of Godiva, of Earl Oslac, would become extinct; and
that girl would marry--whom? Whom but some French conqueror,--or at best
some English outlaw. In either case Hereward would have no descendants for
whom it was worth his while to labor or to fight. What wonder if he longed
for a son,--and not a son of hers, the barren tree,--to pass his name down
to future generations? It might be worth while, for that, to come in to
the king, to recover his lands, to----She saw it all now, and her heart was
dead within her.

She spent that evening neither eating nor drinking, but sitting over the
log embers, her head upon her hands, and thinking over all her past life
and love, since she saw him, from the gable window, ride the first time
into St. Omer. She went through it all, with a certain stern delight in
the self-torture, deliberately day by day, year by year,--all its lofty
aspirations, all its blissful passages, all its deep disappointments, and
found in it--so she chose to fancy in the wilfulness of her misery--
nothing but cause for remorse. Self in all, vanity, and vexation of
spirit; for herself she had loved him; for herself she had tried to raise
him; for herself she had set her heart on man, and not on God. She had
sown the wind: and behold, she had reaped the whirlwind. She could not
repent; she could not pray. But oh! that she could die.

She was unjust to herself, in her great nobleness. It was not true, not
half, not a tenth part true. But perhaps it was good for her that it
should seem true, for that moment; that she should be emptied of all
earthly things for once, if so she might be filled from above.

At last she went into the inner room to lie down and try to sleep. At her
feet, under the perch where Hereward's armor had hung, lay an open letter.

She picked it up, surprised at seeing such a thing there, and kneeling
down, held it eagerly to the wax candle which was on a spike at the bed's
head.

She knew the handwriting in a moment. It was Alftruda's.

This, then, was why Hereward had been so strangely hurried. He must have
had that letter, and dropped it.

Her eye and mind took it all in, in one instant, as the lightning flash
reveals a whole landscape. And then her mind became as dark as that
landscape, when the flash is past.

It congratulated Hereward on having shaken himself free from the
fascination of that sorceress. It said that all was settled with King
William. Hereward was to come to Winchester. She had the King's writ for
his safety ready to send to him. The King would receive him as his
liegeman. Alftruda would receive him as her husband. Archbishop Lanfranc
had made difficulties about the dissolution of the marriage with Torfrida:
but gold would do all things at Rome; and Lanfranc was her very good
friend, and a reasonable man,--and so forth.

Men, and beasts likewise, when stricken with a mortal wound, will run, and
run on, blindly, aimless, impelled by the mere instinct of escape from
intolerable agony. And so did Torfrida. Half undrest as she was, she fled
forth into the forest, she knew not whither, running as one does wrapt in
fire: but the fire was not without her, but within.

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