Book: Hereward, The Last of the English

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They threw up their lance-points, and stood round to see that great fight.
Letwold's knight rode in among them, and stood likewise; and friend and
foe looked on, as they might at a pair of game-cocks.

Hereward had, to his own surprise and that of his fellows, met his match.
The sparks flew, the iron clanged; but so heavy were the stranger's
strokes, that Hereward reeled again and again. So sure was the guard of
his shield, that Hereward could not wound him, hit where he would. At last
he dealt a furious blow on the stranger's head.

"If that does not bring your master down!" quoth Geri. "By--, Brain-biter
is gone!"

It was too true. Sword Brain-biter's end was come. The Ogre's magic blade
had snapt off short by the handle.

"Your master is a true Englishman, by the hardness of his brains," quoth
Wenoch, as the stranger, reeling for a moment, lifted up his head, and
stared at Hereward in the face, doubtful what to do.

"Will you yield, or fight on?" cried he.

"Yield?" shouted Hereward, rushing upon him, as a mastiff might on a lion,
and striking at his helm, though shorter than him by a head and shoulders,
such swift and terrible blows with the broken hilt, as staggered the tall
stranger.

"What are you at, forgetting what you have at your side?" roared Geri.

Hereward sprang back. He had, as was his custom, a second sword on his
right thigh.

"I forget everything now," said he to himself angrily.

And that was too true. But he drew the second sword, and sprang at his man
once more.

The stranger tried, according to the chronicler, who probably had it from
one of the three by-standers, a blow which has cost many a brave man his
life. He struck right down on Hereward's head. Hereward raised his shield,
warding the stroke, and threw in that _coup de jarret_, which there
is no guarding, after the downright blow has been given. The stranger
dropped upon his wounded knee.

"Yield," cried Hereward in his turn.

"That is not my fashion." And the stranger fought on, upon his stumps,
like Witherington in Chevy Chase.

Hereward, mad with the sight of blood, struck at him four or five times.
The stranger's shield was so quick that he could not hit him, even on his
knee. He held his hand, and drew back, looking at his new rival.

"What the murrain are we two fighting about?" said he at last.

"I know not; neither care," said the other, with a grim chuckle. "But if
any man will fight me, him I fight, ever since I had beard to my chin."

"Thou art the best man that ever I faced."

"That is like enough."

"What wilt thou take, if I give thee thy life?"

"My way on which I was going. For I turn back for no man alive on land."

"Then thou hast not had enough of me?"

"Not by another hour."

"Thou must be born of fiend, and not of man."

"Very like. It is a wise son knows his own father."

Hereward burst out laughing.

"Would to heaven I had had thee for my man this three years since."

"Perhaps I would not have been thy man."

"Why not?"

"Because I have been my own man ever since I was born, and am well content
with myself for my master."

"Shall I bind up thy leg?" asked Hereward, having no more to say, and not
wishing to kill the man.

"No. It will grow again, like a crab's claw."

"Thou art a fiend." And Hereward turned away, sulky, and half afraid.

"Very like. No man knows what a devil he is, till he tries."

"What dost mean?" and Hereward turned angrily back.

"Fiends we are all, till God's grace comes."

"Little grace has come to thee yet, by thy ungracious tongue."

"Rough to men, may be gracious to women."

"What hast thou to do with women'?" asked Hereward, fiercely.

"I have a wife, and I love her."

"Thou art not like to get back to her to-day."

"I fear not, with this paltry scratch. I had looked for a cut from thee,
would have saved me all fighting henceforth."

"What dost mean?" asked Hereward, with an oath.

"That my wife is in heaven, and I would needs follow her."

Hereward got on his horse, and rode away. Never could he find out who that
Sir Letwold was, or how he came into the Bruneswald. All he knew was, that
he never had had such a fight since he wore beard; and that he had lost
sword Brainbiter: from which his evil conscience augured that his luck had
turned, and that he should lose many things beside.




CHAPTER XXXVIII.

HOW HEREWARD CAME IN TO THE KING.


After these things Hereward summoned all his men, and set before them the
hopelessness of any further resistance, and the promises of amnesty,
lands, and honors which William had offered him, and persuaded them--and
indeed he had good arguments enough and to spare--that they should go and
make their peace with the King.

They were so accustomed to look up to his determination, that when it gave
way theirs gave way likewise. They were so accustomed to trust his wisdom,
that most of them yielded at once to his arguments. That the band should
break up, all agreed. A few of the more suspicious, or more desperate,
said that they could never trust the Norman; that Hereward himself had
warned them again and again of his treachery. That he was now going to do
himself what he had laughed at Gospatrick and the rest for doing; what had
brought ruin on Edwin and Morcar; what he had again and again prophesied
would bring ruin on Waltheof himself ere all was over.

But Hereward was deaf to their arguments. He had said as little to them as
he could about Alftruda, for very shame; but he was utterly besotted on
her. For her sake, he had determined to run his head blindly into the very
snare of which he had warned others. And he had seared--so he fancied--his
conscience. It was Torfrida's fault now, not his. If she left him,--if she
herself freed him of her own will,--why, he was free, and there was no
more to be said about it.

And Hereward (says the chronicler) took Gwenoch, Geri, and Matelgar, and
rode south to the King.

Where were the two young Siwards? It is not said. Probably they, and a few
desperadoes, followed the fashion of so many English in those sad
days,--when, as sings the Norse scald,

"Cold heart and bloody hand
Now rule English land,"--

and took ship for Constantinople, and enlisted in the Varanger guard, and
died full of years and honors, leaving fair-haired children behind them,
to become Varangers in their turn.

Be that as it may, Hereward rode south. But when he had gotten a long way
upon the road, a fancy (says the chronicler) came over him. He was not
going in pomp and glory enough. It seemed mean for the once great Hereward
to sneak into Winchester with three knights. Perhaps it seemed not over
safe for the once great Hereward to travel with only three knights. So he
went back all the way to camp, and took (says the chronicler) "forty most
famous knights, all big and tall of stature, and splendid,--if from
nothing else, from their looks and their harness alone."

So Hereward and those forty knights rode down from Peterborough, along the
Roman road. For the Roman roads were then, and for centuries after, the
only roads in this land; and our forefathers looked on them as the work of
gods and giants, and called them after the names of their old gods and
heroes,--Irmen Street, Watling Street, and so forth.

And then, like true Englishmen, our own forefathers showed their respect
for the said divine works, not by copying them, but by picking them to
pieces to pave every man his own court-yard. Be it so. The neglect of new
roads, the destruction of the old ones, was a natural evil consequence of
local self-government. A cheap price, perhaps, after all, to pay for that
power of local self-government which has kept England free unto this day.

Be that as it may, down the Roman road Hereward went; past Alconbury Hill,
of the old posting days; past Wimpole Park, then deep forest; past
Hatfield, then deep forest likewise; and so to St. Alban's. And there they
lodged in the minster; for the monks thereof were good English, and sang
masses daily for King Harold's soul. And the next day they went south, by
ways which are not so clear.

Just outside St. Alban's--Verulamium of the Romans (the ruins whereof were
believed to be full of ghosts, demons, and magic treasures)--they turned,
at St. Stephen's, to the left, off the Roman road to London; and by
another Roman road struck into the vast forest which ringed London round
from northeast to southwest. Following the upper waters of the Colne,
which ran through the woods on their left, they came to Watford, and then
turned probably to Rickmansworth. No longer on the Roman paved ways, they
followed horse-tracks, between the forest and the rich marsh-meadows of
the Colne, as far as Denham, and then struck into a Roman road again at
the north end of Langley Park. From thence, over heathy commons,--for that
western part of Buckinghamshire, its soil being light and some gravel, was
little cultivated then, and hardly all cultivated now,--they held on
straight by Langley town into the Vale of Thames.

Little they dreamed, as they rode down by Ditton Green, off the heathy
commons, past the poor, scattered farms, on to the vast rushy meadows,
while upon them was the dull weight of disappointment, shame, all but
despair; their race enslaved, their country a prey to strangers, and all
its future, like their own, a lurid blank,--little they dreamed of what
that vale would be within eight hundred years,--the eye of England, and it
may be of the world; a spot which owns more wealth and peace, more art and
civilization, more beauty and more virtue, it may be, than any of God's
gardens which make fair this earth. Windsor, on its crowned steep, was to
them but a new hunting palace of the old miracle-monger Edward, who had
just ruined England. Runnymede, a mile below them down the broad stream,
was but a horse-fen fringed with water-lilies, where the men of Wessex had
met of old to counsel, and to bring the country to this pass. And as they
crossed, by ford or ferry-boat, the shallows of old Windsor, whither they
had been tending all along, and struck into the moorlands of Wessex
itself, they were as men going into an unknown wilderness: behind them
ruin, and before them unknown danger.

On through Windsor Forest, Edward the Saint's old hunting-ground; its
bottoms choked with beech and oak, and birch and alder scrub; its upper
lands vast flats of level heath; along the great trackway which runs along
the lower side of Chobham Camp, some quarter of a mile broad, every rut
and trackway as fresh at this day as when the ancient Briton, finding that
his neighbor's essedum--chariot, or rather cart--had worn the ruts too
deep, struck out a fresh wandering line for himself across the dreary
heath.

Over the Blackwater by Sandhurst, and along the flats of Hartford Bridge,
where the old furze-grown ruts show the track-way to this day. Down into
the clayland forests of the Andredsweald, and up out of them again at
Basing, on to the clean crisp chalk turf; to strike at Popham Lane the
Roman road from Silchester, and hold it over the high downs, till they saw
far below them the royal city of Winchester.

Itchen, silver as they looked on her from above, but when they came down
to her, so clear that none could see where water ended and where air
began, hurried through the city in many a stream. Beyond it rose the
"White Camp,"' the "Venta Belgarum," the circular earthwork of white chalk
on the high down. Within the city rose the ancient minster church, built
by Ethelwold,--ancient even then,--where slept the ancient kings; Kennulf,
Egbert, and Ethelwulf the Saxons; and by them the Danes, Canute the Great,
and Hardicanute his son, and Norman Emma his wife, and Ethelred's before
him; and the great Earl Godwin, who seemed to Hereward to have died, not
twenty, but two hundred years ago;--and it may be an old Saxon hall upon
the little isle whither Edgar had bidden bring the heads of all the wolves
in Wessex, where afterwards the bishops built Wolvesey Palace. But nearer
to them, on the down which sloped up to the west, stood an uglier thing,
which they saw with curses deep and loud,--the keep of the new Norman
castle by the west gate.

Hereward halted his knights upon the down outside the northern gate. Then
he rode forward himself. The gate was open wide; but he did not care to go
in.

So he rode into the gateway, and smote upon that gate with his lance-but.
But the porter saw the knights upon the down, and was afraid to come out;
for he feared treason.

Then Hereward smote a second time; but the porter did not come out.

Then he took the lance by the shaft, and smote a third time. And he smote
so hard, that the lance-but flew to flinders against Winchester Gate.

And at that started out two knights, who had come down from the castle,
seeing the meinie on the down, and asked,--

"Who art thou who knockest here so bold?"

"Who I am any man can see by those splinters, if he knows what men are
left in England this day."

The knights looked at the broken wood, and then at each other. Who could
the man be who could beat an ash stave to flinders at a single blow?

"You are young, and do not know me; and no shame to you. Go and tell
William the King, that Hereward is come to put his hands between the
King's, and be the King's man henceforth."

"You are Hereward?" asked one, half awed, half disbelieving at Hereward's
short stature.

"You are--I know not who. Pick up those splinters, and take them to King
William; and say, 'The man who broke that lance against the gate is here
to make his peace with thee,' and he will know who I am."

And so cowed were these two knights with Hereward's royal voice, and royal
eye, and royal strength, that they went simply, and did what he bade them.

And when King William saw the splinters, he was as joyful as man could be,
and said,--

"Send him to me, and tell him, Bright shines the sun to me that lights
Hereward into Winchester."

"But, Lord King, he has with him a meinie of full forty knights."

"So much the better. I shall have the more valiant Englishmen to help my
valiant French."

So Hereward rode round, outside the walls, to William's new entrenched
palace, outside the west gate, by the castle.

And then Hereward went in, and knelt before the Norman, and put his hands
between William's hands, and swore to be his man.

"I have kept my word," said he, "which I sent to thee at Rouen seven years
agone. Thou art King of all England; and I am the last man to say so."

"And since thou hast said it, I am King indeed. Come with me, and dine;
and to-morrow I will see thy knights."

And William walked out of the hall leaning on Hereward's shoulder, at
which all the Normans gnashed their teeth with envy.

"And for my knights, Lord King? Thine and mine will mix, for a while yet,
like oil and water; and I fear lest there be murder done between them."

"Likely enough."

So the knights were bestowed in a "vill" near by; "and the next day the
venerable king himself went forth to see those knights, and caused them to
stand, and march before him, both with arms, and without. With whom being
much delighted, he praised them, congratulating them on their beauty and
stature, and saying that they must all be knights of fame in war." After
which Hereward sent them all home except two; and waited till he should
marry Alftruda, and get back his heritage.

"And when that happens," said William, "why should we not have two
weddings, beausire, as well as one? I hear that you have in Crowland a
fair daughter, and marriageable."

Hereward bowed.

"And I have found a husband for her suitable to her years, and who may
conduce to your peace and serenity."

Hereward bit his lip. To refuse was impossible in those days. But--

"I trust that your Grace has found a knight of higher lineage than him,
whom, after so many honors, you honored with the hand of my niece."

William laughed. It was not his interest to quarrel with Hereward. "Aha!
Ivo, the wood-cutter's son. I ask your pardon for that, Sir Hereward. Had
you been my man then, as you are now, it might have been different."

"If a king ask my pardon, I can only ask his in return."

"You must be friends with Taillebois. He is a brave knight, and a wise
warrior."

"None ever doubted that."

"And to cover any little blots in his escutcheon, I have made him an earl,
as I may make you some day."

"Your Majesty, like a true king, knows how to reward. Who is this knight
whom you have chosen for my lass?"

"Sir Hugh of Evermue, a neighbor of yours, and a man of blood and
breeding."

"I know him, and his lineage; and it is very well. I humbly thank your
Majesty."

"Can I be the same man?" said Hereward to himself, bitterly.

And he was not the same man. He was besotted on Alftruda, and humbled
himself accordingly.




CHAPTER XXXIX.

HOW TORFRIDA CONFESSED THAT SHE HAD BEEN INSPIRED BY THE DEVIL.


After a few days, there came down a priest to Crowland, and talked with
Torfrida, in Archbishop Lanfranc's name.

Whether Lanfranc sent him, or merely (as is probable) Alftruda, he could
not have come in a more fit name. Torfrida knew (with all the world) how
Lanfranc had arranged William the Norman's uncanonical marriage, with the
Pope, by help of Archdeacon Hildebrand (afterwards Pope himself); and had
changed his mind deftly to William's side when he saw that William might
be useful to Holy Church, and could enslave, if duly managed, not only the
nation of England to himself, but the clergy of England to Rome. All this
Torfrida, and the world, knew. And therefore she answered:--

"Lanfranc? I can hardly credit you: for I hear that he is a good man,
though hard. But he has settled a queen's marriage suit; so he may very
well settle mine."

After which they talked together; and she answered him, the priest said,
so wisely and well, that he never had met with a woman of so clear a
brain, or of so stout a heart.

At last, being puzzled to get that which he wanted, he touched on the
matter of her marriage with Hereward.

She wished it, he said, dissolved. She wished herself to enter religion.

Archbishop Lanfranc would be most happy to sanction so holy a desire, but
there were objections. She was a married woman; and her husband had not
given his consent.

"Let him give it, then."

There were still objections. He had nothing to bring against her, which
could justify the dissolution of the holy bond: unless--"

"Unless I bring some myself?"

"There have been rumors--I say not how true--of magic and sorcery!--"

Torfrida leaped up from her seat, and laughed such a laugh, that the
priest said in after years, it rung through his head as if it had arisen
out of the pit of the lost.

"So that is what you want, Churchman! Then you shall have it. Bring me pen
and ink. I need not to confess to you. You shall read my confession when
it is done. I am a better scribe, mind you, than any clerk between here
and Paris."

She seized the pen and ink, and wrote; not fiercely, as the priest
expected, but slowly and carefully. Then she gave it the priest to read.

"Will that do, Churchman? Will that free my soul, and that of your French
Archbishop?"

And the priest read to himself.

How Torfrida of St. Omer, born at Aries in Provence, confest that from her
youth up she had been given to the practice of diabolic arts, and had at
divers times and places used the same, both alone and with Richilda, late
Countess of Hainault. How, wickedly, wantonly, and instinct with a
malignant spirit, she had compassed, by charms and spells, to win the love
of Hereward. How she had ever since kept in bondage him, and others whom
she had not loved with the same carnal love, but only desired to make them
useful to her own desire of power and glory, by the same magical arts; for
which she now humbly begged pardon of Holy Church, and of all Christian
folk; and, penetrated with compunction, desired only that she might retire
into the convent of Crowland. She asserted the marriage which she had so
unlawfully compassed to be null and void; and prayed to be released
therefrom, as a burden to her conscience and soul, that she might spend
the rest of her life in penitence for her many enormous sins. She
submitted herself to the judgment of Holy Church, only begging that this
her free confession might be counted in her favor and that she might hot
be put to death, as she deserved, nor sent into perpetual imprisonment;
because her mother-in-law according to the flesh, the Countess Godiva,
being old and infirm, had daily need of her; and she wished to serve her
menially as long as she lived. After which, she put herself utterly upon
the judgment of the Church. And meanwhile, she desired and prayed that she
might be allowed to remain at large in the said monastery of Crowland, not
leaving the precincts thereof, without special leave given by the Abbot
and prioress in one case between her and them reserved; to wear garments
of hair-cloth; to fast all the year on bread and water; and to be
disciplined with rods or otherwise, at such times as the prioress should
command, and to such degree as her body, softened with carnal luxury,
could reasonably endure. And beyond--that, being dead to the world, God
might have mercy on her soul.

And she meant what she said. The madness of remorse and disappointment, so
common in the wild middle age, had come over her; and with it the twin
madness of self-torture.

The priest read, and trembled; not for Torfrida: but for himself, lest she
should enchant him after all.

"She must have been an awful sinner," said he to the monks when he got
safe out of the room; "comparable only to the witch of Endor, or the woman
Jezebel, of whom St. John writes in the Revelations."

"I do not know how you Frenchmen measure folks, when you see them; but to
our mind she is,--for goodness, humility, and patience comparable only to
an angel of God," said Abbot Ulfketyl.

"You Englishmen will have to change your minds on many points, if you mean
to stay here."

"We shall not change them, and we shall stay here," quoth the Abbot.

"How? You will not get Sweyn and his Danes to help you a second time."

"No, we shall all die, and give you your wills, and you will not have the
heart to cast our bones into the fens?"

"Not unless you intend to work miracles, and set up for saints, like your
Alphege Edmund."

"Heaven forbid that we should compare ourselves with them! Only let us
alone till we die."

"If you let us alone, and do not turn traitor meanwhile."

Abbot Ulfketyl bit his lip, and kept down the rising fiend.

"And now," said the priest, "deliver me over Torfrida the younger,
daughter of Hereward and this woman, that I may take her to the King, who
has found a fit husband for her."

"You will hardly get her."

"Not get her?"

"Not without her mother's consent. The lass cares for naught but her."

"Pish! that sorceress? Send for the girl."

Abbot Ulfketyl, forced in his own abbey, great and august lord though he
was, to obey any upstart of a Norman priest who came backed by the King
and Lanfranc, sent for the lass.

The young outlaw came in,--hawk on fist, and its hood off, for it was a
pet,--short, sturdy, upright, brown-haired, blue-eyed, ill-dressed, with
hard hands and sun-burnt face, but with the hawk-eye of her father and her
mother, and the hawks among which she was bred. She looked the priest over
from head to foot, till he was abashed.

"A Frenchman!" said she, and she said no more.

The priest looked at her eyes, and then at the hawk's eyes. They were
disagreeably like each other. He told his errand as courteously as he
could, for he was not a bad-hearted man for a Norman priest.

The lass laughed him to scorn. The King's commands? She never saw a king
in the greenwood, and cared for none. There was no king in England now,
since Sweyn Ulfsson sailed back to Denmark. Who was this Norman William,
to sell a free English lass like a colt or a cow? The priest might go back
to the slaves of Wessex, and command them if he could; but in the fens,
men were free, and lasses too.

The priest was piously shocked and indignant; and began to argue.

She played with her hawk, instead of listening, and then was marching out
of the room.

"Your mother," said he, "is a sorceress."

"You are a knave, or set on by knaves. You lie, and you know you lie." And
she turned away again.

"She has confessed it."

"You have driven her mad between you, till she will confess anything. I
presume you threatened to burn her, as some of you did awhile back." And
the young lady made use of words equally strong and true.

The priest was not accustomed to the direct language of the greenwood, and
indignant on his own account, threatened, and finally offered to use,
force. Whereon there looked up into his face such a demon (so he said) as
he never had seen or dreamed of, and said:

"If you lay a finger on me, I will brittle you like any deer." And
therewith pulled out a saying-knife, about half as long again as the said
priest's hand, being very sharp, so he deposed, down the whole length of
one edge, and likewise down his little finger's length of the other.

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