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Not being versed in the terms of English venery, he asked Abbot Ulfketyl
what brittling of a deer might mean; and being informed that it was that
operation on the carcass of a stag which his countrymen called
_eventrer_, and Highland gillies now "gralloching," he subsided, and
thought it best to go and consult the young lady's mother.

She, to his astonishment, submitted at once and utterly. The King, and he
whom she had called her husband, were very gracious. It was all well. She
would have preferred, and the Lady Godiva too, after their experience of
the world and the flesh, to have devoted her daughter to Heaven in the
minster there. But she was unworthy. Who was she, to train a bride for Him
who died on Cross? She accepted this as part of her penance, with
thankfulness and humility. She had heard that Sir Hugh of Evermue was a
gentleman of ancient birth and good prowess, and she thanked the King for
his choice. Let the priest tell her daughter that she commanded her to go
with him to Winchester. She did not wish to see her. She was stained with
many crimes, and unworthy to approach a pure maiden. Besides, it would
only cause misery and tears. She was trying to die to the world and to the
flesh; and she did not wish to reawaken their power within her. Yes. It
was very well. Let the lass go with him."

"Thou art indeed a true penitent," said the priest, his human heart
softening him.

"Thou art very much mistaken," said she, and turned away.

The girl, when she heard her mother's command, wept, shrieked, and went.
At least she was going to her father. And from wholesome fear of that same
saying-knife, the priest left her in peace all the way to Winchester.

After which, Abbot Ulfketyl went into his lodgings, and burst, like a
noble old nobleman as he was, into bitter tears of rage and shame.

But Torfrida's eyes were as dry as her own sackcloth.

The priest took the letter back to Winchester, and showed it--it may be to
Archbishop Lanfranc. But what he said, this chronicler would not dare to
say. For he was a very wise man, and a very stanch and strong pillar of
the Holy Roman Church. Meanwhile, he was man enough not to require that
anything should be added to Torfrida's penance; and that was enough to
prove him a man in those days,--at least for a churchman,--as it proved
Archbishop or St. Ailred to be, a few years after, in the case of the nun
of Watton, to be read in Gale's "Scriptores Anglicaniae." Then he showed
the letter to Alftruda.

And she laughed one of her laughs, and said, "I have her at last!"

Then, as it befell, he was forced to shew the letter to Queen Matilda; and
she wept over it human tears, such as she, the noble heart, had been
forced to keep many a time before, and said, "The poor soul!--You,
Alftruda, woman! does Hereward know of this?"

"No, madam," said Alftruda, not adding that she had taken good care that
he should not know.

"It is the best thing which I have heard of him. I should tell him, were
it not that I must not meddle with my lord's plans. God grant him a good
delivery, as they say of the poor souls in jail. Well, madam, you have
your will at last. God give you grace thereof, for you have not given Him
much chance as yet."

"Your majesty will honor us by coming to the wedding?" asked Alftruda,
utterly unabashed.

Matilda the good looked at her with a face of such calm, childlike
astonishment, that Alftruda dropped her "fairy neck" at last, and slunk
out of the presence like a beaten cur.

William went to the wedding; and swore horrible oaths that they were the
handsomest pair he had ever seen. And so Hereward married Alftruda. How
Holy Church settled the matter is not said. But that Hereward married
Alftruda, under these very circumstances, may be considered a "historic
fact," being vouched for by Gaimar, and by the Peterborough Chronicler.
And doubtless Holy Church contrived that it should happen without sin, if
it conduced to her own interest.

And little Torfrida--then, it seems, some sixteen years of age--was
married to Hugh of Evermue. She wept and struggled as she was dragged into
the church.

"But I do not want to be married. I want to go back to my mother."

"The diabolic instinct may have descended to her," said the priests, "and
attracts her to the sorceress. We had best sprinkle her with holy water."

So they sprinkled her with holy water, and used exorcisms. Indeed, the
case being an important one, the personages of rank, they brought out from
their treasures the apron of a certain virgin saint, and put it round her
neck, in hopes of driving out the hereditary fiend.

"If I am led with a halter, I must needs go," said she, with one of her
mother's own flashes of wit, and went. "But Lady Alftruda," whispered she,
half-way up the church, "I never loved him."

"Behave yourself before the King, or I will whip you till the blood runs."

And so she would, and no one would have wondered in those days.

"I will murder you if you do. But I never even saw him."

"Little fool! And what are you going through, but what I went through
before you?"

"You to say that?" gnashed the girl, as another spark of her mother's came
out. "And you gaining what--"

"What I waited for for fifteen years," said Alftruda, coolly. "If you have
courage and cunning, like me, to wait for fifteen years, you too may have
your will likewise."

The pure child shuddered, and was married to Hugh of Evermue, who is not
said to have kicked her; and was, according to them of Crowland, a good
friend to their monastery, and therefore, doubtless, a good man. Once,
says wicked report, he offered to strike her, as was the fashion in those
chivalrous days. Whereon she turned upon him like a tigress, and bidding
him remember that she was the daughter of Hereward and Torfrida, gave him
such a beating that he, not wishing to draw sword upon her, surrendered at
discretion; and they lived all their lives afterwards as happily as most
other married people in those times.




CHAPTER XL.

HOW HEREWARD BEGAN TO GET HIS SOUL'S PRICE.


And now behold Hereward at home again, fat with the wages of sin, and not
knowing that they are death.

He is once more "Dominus de Brunune cum Marisco," (Lord of Bourne with the
fen), "with all returns and liberties and all other things adjacent to the
same vill which are now held as a barony from the Lord King of England."
He has a fair young wife, and with her farms and manors, even richer than
his own. He is still young, hearty, wise by experience, high in the king's
favor, and deservedly so.

Why should he not begin life again?

Why not? Unless it be true that the wages of sin are, not a new life, but
death.

And yet he has his troubles. Hardly a Norman knight or baron round but has
a blood-feud against him, for a kinsman slain. Sir Aswart, Thorold the
abbot's man, was not likely to forgive him for turning him out of the
three Mainthorpe manors, which he had comfortably held for two years past,
and sending him back to lounge in the abbot's hall at Peterborough,
without a yard of land he could call his own. Sir Ascelin was not likely
to forgive him for marrying Alftruda, whom he had intended to marry
himself. Ivo Taillebois was not likely to forgive him for existing within
a hundred miles of Spalding, any more than the wolf would forgive the lamb
for fouling the water below him. Beside, had he (Ivo) not married
Hereward's niece? and what more grievous offence could Hereward commit,
than to be her uncle, reminding Ivo of his own low birth by his nobility,
and too likely to take Lucia's part, whenever it should please Ivo to beat
or kick her? Only "Gilbert of Ghent," the pious and illustrious earl, sent
messages of congratulation and friendship to Hereward, it being his custom
to sail with the wind, and worship the rising sun--till it should decline
again.

But more: hardly one of the Normans round, but, in the conceit of their
skin-deep yesterday's civilization, look on Hereward as a barbarian
Englishman, who has his throat tattooed, and wears a short coat, and
prefers--the churl--to talk English in his own hall, though he can talk as
good French as they when he is with them, beside three or four barbarian
tongues if he has need.

But more still: if they are not likely to bestow their love on Hereward,
Hereward is not likely to win love from them of his own will. He is
peevish, and wrathful, often insolent and quarrelsome; and small blame to
him. The Normans are invaders and tyrants, who have no business there, and
should not be there, if he had his way. And they and he can no more
amalgamate than fire and water. Moreover, he is a very great man, or has
been such once, and he thinks himself one still. He has been accustomed to
command men, whole armies; and he will no more treat these Normans as his
equals, than they will treat him as such. His own son-in-law, Hugh of
Evermue, has to take hard words,--thoroughly well deserved, it may be; but
all the more unpleasant for that reason.

The truth was, that Hereward's heart was gnawed with shame and remorse;
and therefore he fancied, and not without reason, that all men pointed at
him the finger of scorn.

He had done a bad, base, accursed deed. And he knew it. Once in his
life--for his other sins were but the sins of his age--the Father of men
seems (if the chroniclers say truth) to have put before this splendid
barbarian good and evil, saying, Choose! And he knew that the evil was
evil, and chose it nevertheless.

Eight hundred years after, a still greater genius and general had the same
choice--as far as human cases of conscience can be alike--put before him.
And he chose as Hereward chose.

But as with Napoleon and Josephine, so it was with Hereward and Torfrida.
Neither throve after.

It was not punished by miracle. What sin is? It worked out its own
punishment; that which it merited, deserved, or earned, by its own labor.
No man could commit such a sin without shaking his whole character to the
root. Hereward tried to persuade himself that his was not shaken; that he
was the same Hereward as ever. But he could not deceive himself long. His
conscience was evil. He was discontented with all mankind, and with
himself most of all. He tried to be good,--as good as he chose to be. If
he had done wrong in one thing, he might make up for it in others; but he
could not.

All his higher instincts fell from him one by one. He did not like to
think of good and noble things; he dared not think of them. He felt, not
at first, but as the months rolled on, that he was a changed man; that God
had left him. His old bad habits began to return to him. Gradually he sank
back into the very vices from which Torfrida had raised him sixteen years
before, He took to drinking again, to dull the malady of thought; he
excused himself to himself; he wished to forget his defeats, his
disappointment, the ruin of his country, the splendid past which lay
behind him like a dream. True: but he wished to forget likewise Torfrida
fasting and weeping in Crowland. He could not bear the sight of Crowland
tower on the far green horizon, the sound of Crowland bells booming over
the flat on the south-wind. He never rode down into the fens; he never
went to see his daughter at Deeping, because Crowland lay that way. He
went up into the old Bruneswald, hunted all day long through the glades
where he and his merry men had done their doughty deeds, and came home in
the evening to get drunk.

Then he lost his sleep. He sent down to Crowland, to Leofric the priest,
that he might come to him, and sing his sagas of the old heroes, that he
might get rest. But Leofric sent back for answer that he would not come.

That night Alftruda heard him by her side in the still hours, weeping
silently to himself. She caressed him: but he gave no heed to her.

"I believe," said she bitterly at last, "that you love Torfrida still
better than you do me."

And Hereward answered, like Mahomet in like case, "That do I, by heaven.
She believed in me when no one else in the world did."

And the vain, hard Alftruda answered angrily; and there was many a fierce
quarrel between them after that.

With his love of drinking, his love of boasting came back. Because he
could do no more great deeds--or rather had not the spirit left in him to
do more--he must needs, like a worn-out old man, babble of the great deeds
which he had done; insult and defy his Norman neighbors; often talk what
might be easily caricatured into treason against King William himself.

There were great excuses for his follies, as there are for those of every
beaten man; but Hereward was spent. He had lived his life, and had no more
life which he could live; for every man, it would seem, brings into the
world with him a certain capacity, a certain amount of vital force, in
body and in soul; and when that is used up, the man must sink down into
some sort of second childhood, and end, like Hereward, very much where he
began; unless the grace of God shall lift him up above the capacity of the
mere flesh, into a life literally new, ever-renewing, ever-expanding, and
eternal.

But the grace of God had gone away from Hereward, as it goes away from all
men who are unfaithful to their wives.

It was very pitiable. Let no man judge him. Life, to most, is very hard
work. There are those who endure to the end, and are saved; there are
those, again, who do not endure: upon whose souls may God have mercy.

So Hereward soon became as intolerable to his Norman neighbors as they
were intolerable to him.

Whereon, according to the simple fashion of those primitive times, they
sought about for some one who would pick a quarrel with Hereward, and slay
him in fair fight. But an Archibald Bell-the-Cat was not to be found on
every hedge.

But it befell that Oger the Breton, he who had Morcar's lands round
Bourne, came up to see after his lands, and to visit his friend and
fellow-robber, Ivo Taillebois.

Ivo thought the hot-headed Breton, who had already insulted Hereward with
impunity at Winchester, the fittest man for his purpose; and asked him,
over his cups, whether he had settled with that English ruffian about the
Docton land?

Now, King William had judged that Hereward and Oger should hold that land
between them, as he and Toli had done. But when "two dogs," as Ivo said,
"have hold of the same bone, it is hard if they cannot get a snap at each
other's noses."

Oger agreed to that opinion; and riding into Bourne, made inquisition into
the doings at Docton. And--scandalous injustice!--he found that an old
woman had sent six hens to Hereward, whereof she should have kept three
for him.

So he sent to demand formally of Hereward those three hens; and was
unpleasantly disappointed when Hereward, instead of offering to fight him,
sent him them in an hour, and a lusty young cock into the bargain, with
this message,--That he hoped they might increase and multiply; for it was
a shame of an honest Englishman if he did not help a poor Breton churl to
eat roast fowls for the first time in his life, after feeding on nothing
better than furze-toppings, like his own ponies.

To which Oger, who, like a true Breton, believed himself descended from
King Arthur, Sir Tristram, and half the knights of the Round Table,
replied that his blood was to that of Hereward as wine to peat-water; and
that Bretons used furze-toppings only to scourge the backs of insolent
barbarians.

To which Hereward replied, that there were gnats enough pestering him in
the fens already, and that one more was of no consequence.

Wherefrom the Breton judged, as at Winchester, that Hereward had no lust
to fight.

The next day he met Hereward going out to hunt, and was confirmed in his
opinion when Hereward lifted his cap to him most courteously, saying that
he was not aware before that his neighbor was a gentleman of such high
blood.

"Blood? Better at least than thine, thou bare-legged Saxon, who has dared
to call me churl. So you must needs have your throat cut? I took you for a
wiser man."

"Many have taken me for that which I am not. If you will harness yourself,
I will do the same; and we will ride up into the Bruneswald, and settle
this matter in peace."

"Three men on each side to see fair play," said the Breton.

And up into the Bruneswald they rode; and fought long without advantage on
either side.

Hereward was not the man which he had been. His nerve was gone, as well as
his conscience; and all the dash and fury of his old onslaughts gone
therewith.

He grew tired of the fight, not in body, but in mind; and more than once
drew back.

"Let us stop this child's play," said he, according to the chronicler;
"what need have we to fight here all day about nothing?"

Whereat the Breton fancied him already more than half-beaten, and attacked
more furiously than ever. He would be the first man on earth who ever had
had the better of the great outlaw. He would win himself eternal glory, as
the champion of all England.

But he had mistaken his man, and his indomitable English pluck. "It was
Hereward's fashion, in fight and war," says the chronicler, "always to ply
the man most at the last." And so found the Breton; for Hereward suddenly
lost patience, and rushing on him with one of his old shouts, hewed at him
again and again, as if his arm would never tire.

Oger gave back, would he or not. In a few moments his sword-arm dropt to
his side, cut half through.

"Have you had enough, Sir Tristram the younger?" quoth Hereward, wiping
his sword, and walking moodily away.

Oger went out of Bourne with his arm in a sling, and took counsel with Ivo
Taillebois. Whereon they two mounted, and rode to Lincoln, and took
counsel with Gilbert of Ghent.

The fruit of which was this. That a fortnight after Gilbert rode into
Bourne with a great meinie, full a hundred strong, and with him the
sheriff and the king's writ, and arrested Hereward on a charge of speaking
evil of the king, breaking his peace, compassing the death of his faithful
lieges, and various other wicked, traitorous, and diabolical acts.

Hereward was minded at first to fight and die. But Gilbert, who--to do him
justice--wished no harm to his ancient squire, reasoned with him. Why
should he destroy not only himself, but perhaps his people likewise? Why
should he throw away his last chance? The king was not so angry as he
seemed; and if Hereward would but be reasonable, the matter might be
arranged. As it was, he was not to be put to strong prison. He was to be
in the custody of Robert of Herepol, Chatelain of Bedford, who, Hereward
knew, was a reasonable and courteous man. The king had asked him, Gilbert,
to take charge of Hereward.

"And what said you?"

"That I had rather have in my pocket the seven devils that came out of St.
Mary Magdalene; and that I would not have thee within ten miles of Lincoln
town, to be Earl of all the Danelagh. So I begged him to send thee to Sir
Robert, just because I knew him to be a mild and gracious man."

A year before, Hereward would have scorned the proposal; and probably, by
one of his famous stratagems, escaped there and then out of the midst of
all Gilbert's men. But his spirit was broken; indeed, so was the spirit of
every Englishman; and he mounted his horse sullenly, and rode alongside of
Gilbert, unarmed for the first time for many a year.

"You had better have taken me," said Sir Ascelin aside to the weeping
Alftruda.

"I? helpless wretch that I am! What shall I do for my own safety, now he
is gone?"

"Let me come and provide for it."

"Out! wretch! traitor!" cried she.

"There is nothing very traitorous in succoring distressed ladies," said
Ascelin. "If I can be of the least service to Alftruda the peerless, let
her but send, and I fly to do her bidding."

So they rode off.

Hereward went through Cambridge and Potton like a man stunned, and spoke
never a word. He could not even think, till he heard the key turned on him
in a room--not a small or doleful one--in Bedford keep, and found an iron
shackle on his leg, fastened to the stone bench on which he sat.

Robert of Herepol had meant to leave his prisoner loose. But there were
those in Gilbert's train who told him, and with truth, that if he did so,
no man's life would be safe. That to brain the jailer with his own keys,
and then twist out of his bowels a line wherewith to let himself down from
the top of the castle, would be not only easy, but amusing, to the famous
"Wake."

So Robert consented to fetter him so far, but no further; and begged his
pardon again and again as he did it, pleading the painful necessities of
his office.

But Hereward heard him not. He sat in stupefied despair. A great black
cloud had covered all heaven and earth, and entered into his brain through
every sense, till his mind, as he said afterwards, was like hell, with the
fire gone out.

A jailer came in, he knew not how long after, bringing a good meal, and
wine. He came cautiously toward the prisoner, and when still beyond the
length of his chain, set the food down, and thrust it toward him with a
stick, lest Hereward should leap on him and wring his neck.

But Hereward never even saw him or the food. He sat there all day, all
night, and nearly all the next day, and hardly moved hand or foot. The
jailer told Sir Robert in the evening that he thought the man was mad, and
would die.

So good Sir Robert went up to him, and spoke kindly and hopefully. But all
Hereward answered was, that he was very well. That he wanted nothing. That
he had always heard well of Sir Robert. That he should like to get a
little sleep: but that sleep would not come.

The next day Sir Robert came again early, and found him sitting in the
same place.

"He was very well," he said. "How could he be otherwise? He was just where
he ought to be. A man could not be better than in his right place."

Whereon Sir Robert gave him up for mad.

Then he bethought of sending him a harp, knowing the fame of Hereward's
music and singing. "And when he saw the harp," the jailer said, "he wept;
but bade take the thing away. And so sat still where he was."

In this state of dull despair he remained for many weeks. At last he woke
up.

There passed through and by Bedford large bodies of troops, going as it
were to and from battle. The clank of arms stirred Hereward's heart as of
old, and he sent to Sir Robert to ask what was toward.

Sir Robert, "the venerable man," came to him joyfully and at once, glad to
speak to an illustrious captive, whom he looked on as an injured man; and
told him news enough.

Taillebois's warning about Ralph Guader and Waltheof had not been
needless. Ralph, as the most influential of the Bretons, was on no good
terms with the Normans, save with one, and that one of the most
powerful,--Fitz-Osbern, Earl of Hereford. His sister Ralph was to have
married; but William, for reasons unknown, forbade the match. The two
great earls celebrated the wedding in spite of William, and asked Waltheof
as a guest. And at Exning, between the fen and Newmarket Heath,--

"Was that bride-ale
Which was man's bale."

For there was matured the plot which Ivo and others had long seen brewing.
William had made himself hateful to all men by his cruelties and
tyrannies; and indeed his government was growing more unrighteous day by
day. Let them drive him out of England, and part the land between them.
Two should be dukes, the third king paramount.

"Waltheof, I presume, plotted drunk, and repented sober, when too late.
The wittol! He should have been a monk."

"Repented he has, if ever he was guilty. For he fled to Archbishop
Lanfranc, and confessed to him so much, that Lanfranc declares him
innocent, and has sent him on to William in Normandy."

"O kind priest! true priest! To send his sheep into the wolf's mouth."

"You forget, dear sire, that William is our king."

"I can hardly forget that, with this pretty ring upon my ankle. But after
my experience of how he has kept faith with me, what can I expect for
Waltheof the wittol, save that which I have foretold many a time?"

"As for you, dear sire, the king has been misinformed concerning you. I
have sent messengers to reason with him again and again; but as long as
Taillebois, Warrenne, and Robert Malet had his ear, of what use were my
poor words?"

"And what said they?"

"That there would be no peace in England if you were loose."

"They lied. I am no boy, like Waltheof. I know when the game is played
out. And it is played out now. The Frenchman is master, and I know it
well. Were I loose to-morrow, and as great a fool as Waltheof, what could
I do, with, it may be, some forty knights and a hundred men-at-arms,
against all William's armies? But how goes on this fool's rebellion? If I
had been loose I might have helped to crush it in the bud."

"And you would have done that against Waltheof?"

"Why not against him? He is but bringing more misery on England. Tell that
to William. Tell him that if he sets me free, I will be the first to
attack Waltheof, or whom he will. There are no English left to fight
against," said he, bitterly, "for Waltheof is none now."

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