Book: Hereward, The Last of the English

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"He shall know your words when he returns to England."

"What, is he abroad, and all this evil going on?"

"In Normandy. But the English have risen for the King in Herefordshire,
and beaten Earl Roger; and Odo of Bayeux and Bishop Mowbray are on their
way to Cambridge, where they hope to give a good account of Earl Ralph;
and that the English may help them there."

"And they shall! They hate Ralph Guader as much as I do. Can you send a
message for me?"

"Whither?"

"To Bourne in the Bruneswald; and say to Hereward's men, wherever they
are, Let them rise and arm, if they love Hereward, and down to Cambridge,
to be the foremost at Bishop Odo's side against Ralph Guader, or Waltheof
himself. Send! send! O that I were free!"

"Would to Heaven thou wert free, my gallant sir!" said the good man.

From that day Hereward woke up somewhat. He was still a broken man,
querulous, peevish; but the hope of freedom and the hope of battle woke
him up. If he could but get to his men! But his melancholy returned. His
men--some of them at least--went down to Odo at Cambridge, and did good
service. Guader was utterly routed, and escaped to Norwich, and thence to
Brittany,--his home. The bishops punished their prisoners, the rebel
Normans, with horrible mutilations.

"The wolves are beginning to eat each other," said Hereward to himself.
But it was a sickening thought to him, that his men had been fighting and
he not at their head.

After a while there came to Bedford Castle two witty knaves. One was a
cook, who "came to buy milk," says the chronicler; the other seemingly a
gleeman. They told stories, jested, harped, sang, drank, and pleased much
the garrison and Sir Robert, who let them hang about the place.

They asked next, whether it were true that the famous Hereward was there?
If so, might a man have a look at him?

The jailer said that many men might have gone to see him, so easy was Sir
Robert to him. But he would have no man; and none dare enter save Sir
Robert and he, for fear of their lives. But he would ask him of Herepol.

The good knight of Herepol said, "Let the rogues go in; they may amuse the
poor man."

So they went in, and as soon as they went, he knew them. One was Martin
Lightfoot, the other Leofric the Unlucky.

"Who sent you?" asked he surlily, turning his face away.

"She."

"Who?"

"We know but one she, and she is at Crowland."

"She sent you? and wherefore?"

"That we might sing to you, and make you merry."

Hereward answered them with a terrible word, and turned his face to the
wall, groaning, and then bade them sternly to go.

So they went, for the time.

The jailer told this to Sir Robert, who saw all, being a kind-hearted man.

"From his poor first wife, eh? Well, there can be no harm in that. Nor if
they came from this Lady Alftruda either, for that matter; let them go in
and out when they will."

"But they may be spies and traitors."

"Then we can but hang them."

Robert of Herepol, it would appear from the chronicle, did not much care
whether they were spies or not.

So the men went to and fro, and often sat with Hereward. But he forbade
them sternly to mention Torfrida's name.

Alftruda sent to him meanwhile, again and again, messages of passionate
love and sorrow, and he listened to them as sullenly as he did to his two
servants, and sent no answer back. And so sat more weary months, in the
very prison, it may be in the very room, in which John Bunyan sat nigh six
hundred years after: but in a very different frame of mind.

One day Sir Robert was going up the stairs with another knight, and met
the two coming down. He was talking to that knight earnestly, indignantly:
and somehow, as he passed Leofric and Martin he thought fit to raise his
voice, as if in a great wrath.

"Shame to all honor and chivalry! good saints in heaven, what a thing is
human fortune! That this man, who had once a gallant army at his back,
should be at this moment going like a sheep to the slaughter, to
Buckingham Castle, at the mercy of his worst enemy, Ivo Taillebois, of all
men in the world. If there were a dozen knights left of all those whom he
used to heap with wealth and honor, worthy the name of knights, they would
catch us between here and Stratford, and make a free man of their lord."

So spake--or words to that effect, according to the Latin chronicler, who
must have got them from Leofric himself--the good knight of Herepol.

"Hillo, knaves!" said he, seeing the two, "are you here eavesdropping? out
of the castle this instant, on your lives."

Which hint those two witty knaves took on the spot.

A few days after, Hereward was travelling toward Buckingham, chained upon
a horse, with Sir Robert and his men, and a goodly company of knights
belonging to Ivo. Ivo, as the story runs, seems to have arranged with
Ralph Pagnel at Buckingham to put him into the keeping of a creature of
his own. And how easy it was to put out a man's eyes, or starve him to
death, in a Norman keep, none knew better than Hereward.

But he was past fear or sorrow. A dull heavy cloud of despair had settled
down upon his soul. Black with sin, his heart could not pray. He had
hardened himself against all heaven and earth, and thought, when he
thought at all, only of his wrongs: but never of his sins.

They passed through a forest, seemingly somewhere near what is Newport
Pagnel, named after Ralph, his would-be jailer.

Suddenly from the trees dashed out a body of knights, and at their head
the white-bear banner, in Ranald of Ramsey's hand.

"Halt!" shouted Sir Robert; "we are past the half-way stone. Earl Ivo's
and Earl Ralph's men are answerable now for the prisoner."

"Treason!" shouted Ivo's men, and one would have struck Hereward through
with his lance; but Winter was too quick for him, and bore him from his
saddle; and then dragged Hereward out of the fight.

The Normans, surprised while their helmets were hanging at their saddles,
and their arms not ready for battle, were scattered at once. But they
returned to the attack, confident in their own numbers.

They were over confident. Hereward's fetters were knocked off; and he was
horsed and armed, and, mad with freedom and battle, fighting like himself
once more.

Only as he rode to and fro, thrusting and hewing, he shouted to his men to
spare Sir Robert, and all his meinie, crying that he was the savior of his
life; and when the fight was over, and all Ivo's and Ralph's men who were
not slain had ridden for their lives into Stratford, he shook hands with
that venerable knight, giving him innumerable thanks and courtesies for
his honorable keeping; and begged him to speak well of him to the king.

And so these two parted in peace, and Hereward was a free man.




CHAPTER XLI.

HOW EARL WALTHEOF WAS MADE A SAINT.


A few months after, there sat in Abbot Thorold's lodgings in Peterborough
a select company of Normans, talking over affairs of state after their
supper.

"Well, earls and gentlemen," said the Abbot, as he sipped his wine, "the
cause of our good king, which is happily the cause of Holy Church, goes
well, I think. We have much to be thankful for when we review the events
of the past year. We have finished the rebels; Roger de Breteuil is safe
in prison, Ralph Guader unsafe in Brittany, and Waltheof more than unsafe
in--the place to which traitors descend. We have not a manor left which is
not in loyal Norman hands; we have not an English monk left who has not
been scourged and starved into holy obedience; not an English saint for
whom any man cares a jot, since Guerin de Lire preached down St. Adhelm,
the admirable primate disposed of St. Alphege's martyrdom, and some other
wise man--I am ashamed to say that I forget who--proved that St. Edmund of
Suffolk was merely a barbarian knight, who was killed fighting with Danes
only a little more heathen than himself. We have had great labors and
great sufferings since we landed in this barbarous isle upon our holy
errand ten years since; but, under the shadow of the gonfalon of St.
Peter, we have conquered, and may sing 'Dominus illuminatio mea' with
humble and thankful hearts."

"I don't know that," said Ascelin, "my Lord Uncle; I shall never sing
'Dominus Illuminatio' till I see your coffers illuminated once more by
those thirty thousand marks."

"Or I," said Oger le Breton, "till I see myself safe in that bit of land
which Hereward holds wrongfully of me in Locton."

"Or I," said Ivo Taillebois, "till I see Hereward's head on Bourne gable,
where he stuck up those Norman's heads seven years ago. But what the Lord
Abbot means by saying that we have done with English saints I do not see,
for the villains of Crowland have just made a new one for themselves."

"A new one?"

"I tell you truth and fact; I will tell you all, Lord Abbot; and you shall
judge whether it is not enough to drive an honest man mad to see such
things going on under his nose. Men say of me that I am rough, and swear
and blaspheme. I put it to you, Lord Abbot, if Job would not have cursed
if he had been Lord of Spalding? You know that the king let these Crowland
monks have Waltheof's body?"

"Yes, I thought it an unwise act of grace. It would have been wiser to
leave him, as he desired, out on the down, in ground unconsecrate."

"Of course, of course; for what has happened?"

"That old traitor, Ulfketyl, and his monks bring the body to Crowland, and
bury it as if it had been the Pope's. In a week they begin to spread their
lies,--that Waltheof was innocent; that Archbishop Lanfranc himself said
so."

"That was the only act of human weakness which I have ever known the
venerable prelate commit," said Thorold.

"That these Normans at Winchester were so in the traitor's favor, that the
king had to have him out and cut off his head in the gray of the morning,
ere folks were up and about; that the fellow was so holy that he past all
his time in prison in weeping and praying, and said over the whole Psalter
every day, because his mother had taught it him,--I wish she had taught
him to be an honest man;--and that when his head was on the block he said
all the Paternoster, as far as 'Lead us not into temptation,' and then off
went his head; whereon, his head being off, finished the prayer with--you
know best what comes next, Abbot?"

"Deliver us from evil, Amen! What a manifest lie! The traitor was not
permitted, it is plain, to ask for that which could never be granted to
him; but his soul, unworthy to be delivered from evil, entered instead
into evil, and howls forever in the pit."

"But all the rest may be true," said Oger; "and yet that be no reason why
these monks should say it."

"So I told them, and threatened them too; for, not content with making him
a martyr, they are making him a saint."

"Impious! Who can do that, save the Holy Father?" said Thorold.

"You had best get your bishop to look to them, then, for they are carrying
blind beggars and mad girls by the dozen to be cured at the man's tomb,
that is all. Their fellows in the cell at Spalding went about to take a
girl that had fits off one of my manors, to cure her; but that I stopped
with a good horse-whip."

"And rightly."

"And gave the monks a piece of my mind, and drove them clean out of their
cell home to Crowland."

What a piece of Ivo's mind on this occasion might be, let Ingulf describe.

"Against our monastery and all the people of Crowland he was, by the
instigation of the Devil, raised to such an extreme pitch of fury, that he
would follow their animals in the marshes with his dogs, drive them to a
great distance down in the lakes, mutilate some in the tails, others in
the ears, while often, by breaking the backs and legs of the beasts of
burden, he rendered them utterly useless. Against our cell also (at
Spalding) and our brethren, his neighbors, the prior and monks, who dwelt
all day within his presence, he rages with tyrannical and frantic fury,
lamed their oxen and horses, daily impounded their sheep and poultry,
striking down, killing, and slaying their swine and pigs; while at the
same time the servants of the prior were oppressed in the Earl's court
with insupportable exactions, were often assaulted in the highways with
swords and staves, and sometimes killed."

"Well," went on the injured Earl, "this Hereward gets news of me,--and
news too, I don't know whence, but true enough it is,--that I had sworn to
drive Ulfketyl out of Crowland by writ from king and bishop, and lock him
up as a minister at the other end of England."

"You will do but right. I will send a knight off to the king this day,
telling him all, and begging him to send us up a trusty Norman as abbot of
Crowland, that we may have one more gentleman in the land fit for our
company."

"You must kill Hereward first. For, as I was going to say, he sent word to
me 'that the monks of Crowland were as the apple of his eye, and Abbot
Ulfketyl to him as more than a father; and that if I dared to lay a finger
on them or their property, he would cut my head off.'"

"He has promised to cut my head off likewise," said Ascelin. "Earl,
knights, and gentlemen, do you not think it wiser that we should lay our
wits together once and for all, and cut off his."

"But who will catch the Wake sleeping?" said Ivo, laughing.

"That will I. I have my plans, and my intelligencers."

And so those wicked men took counsel together to slay Hereward.




CHAPTER XLII.

HOW HEREWARD GOT THE BEST OF HIS SOUL'S PRICE.


In those days a messenger came riding post to Bourne. The Countess Judith
wished to visit the tomb of her late husband, Earl Waltheof; and asked
hospitality on her road of Hereward and Alftruda.

Of course she would come with a great train, and the trouble and expense
would be great. But the hospitality of those days, when money was scarce,
and wine scarcer still, was unbounded, and a matter of course; and
Alftruda was overjoyed. No doubt, Judith was the most unpopular person in
England at that moment; called by all a traitress and a fiend. But she was
an old acquaintance of Alftruda's; she was the king's niece; she was
immensely rich, not only in manors of her own, but in manors, as
Domesday-book testifies, about Lincolnshire and the counties round, which
had belonged to her murdered husband,--which she had too probably received
as the price of her treason. So Alftruda looked to her visit as to an
honor which would enable her to hold her head high among the proud Norman
dames, who despised her as the wife of an Englishman.

Hereward looked on the visit in a different light. He called Judith ugly
names, not undeserved; and vowed that if she entered his house by the
front door he would go out at the back. "Torfrida prophesied," he said,
"that she would betray her husband, and she had done it."

"Torfrida prophesied? Did she prophesy that I should betray you likewise?"
asked Alftruda, in a tone of bitter scorn.

"No, you handsome fiend: will you do it?"

"Yes; I am a handsome fiend, am I not?" and she bridled up her magnificent
beauty, and stood over him as a snake stands over a mouse.

"Yes; you are handsome,--beautiful: I adore you."

"And yet you will not do what I wish?"

"What you wish? What would I not do for you? what have I not done for
you?"

"Then receive Judith. And now, go hunting, and bring me in game. I want
deer, roe, fowls; anything and everything from the greatest to the
smallest. Go and hunt."

And Hereward trembled, and went.

There are flowers whose scent is so luscious that silly children will
plunge their heads among them, drinking in their odor, to the exclusion of
all fresh air. On a sudden sometimes comes a revulsion of the nerves. The
sweet odor changes in a moment to a horrible one; and the child cannot
bear for years after the scent which has once disgusted it by
over-sweetness.

And so had it happened to Hereward. He did not love Alftruda now: he
loathed, hated, dreaded her. And yet he could not take his eyes for a
moment off her beauty. He watched every movement of her hand, to press it,
obey it. He would have preferred instead of hunting, simply to sit and
watch her go about the house at her work. He was spell-bound to a thing
which he regarded with horror.

But he was told to go and hunt; and he went, with all his men, and sent
home large supplies for the larder. And as he hunted, the free, fresh air
of the forest comforted him, the free forest life came back to him, and he
longed to be an outlaw once more, and hunt on forever. He would not go
back yet, at least to face that Judith. So he sent back the greater part
of his men with a story. He was ill; he was laid up at a farm-house far
away in the forest, and begged the countess to excuse his absence. He had
sent fresh supplies of game, and a goodly company of his men, knights and
housecarles, who would escort her royally to Crowland.

Judith cared little for his absence; he was but an English barbarian.
Alftruda was half glad to have him out of the way, lest his now sullen and
uncertain temper should break out; and bowed herself to the earth before
Judith, who patronized her to her heart's content, and offered her slyly
insolent condolences on being married to a barbarian. She herself could
sympathize,--who more?

Alftruda might have answered with scorn that she was an Adeliza, and of
better English blood than Judith's Norman blood; but she had her ends to
gain, and gained them.

For Judith was pleased to be so delighted with her that she kissed her
lovingly, and said with much emotion that she required a friend who would
support her through her coming trial; and who better than one who herself
had suffered so much? Would she accompany her to Crowland?

Alftruda was overjoyed, and away they went.

And to Crowland they came; and to the tomb in the minster, whereof men
said already that the sacred corpse within worked miracles of healing.

And Judith, habited in widow's weeds, approached the tomb, and laid on it,
as a peace-offering to the manes of the dead, a splendid pall of silk and
gold.

A fierce blast came howling off the fen, screeched through the minster
towers, swept along the dark aisles; and then, so say the chroniclers,
caught up the pall from off the tomb, and hurled it far away into a
corner.

"A miracle!" cried all the monks at once; and honestly enough, like true
Englishmen as they were.

"The Holy heart refuses the gift, Countess," said old Ulfketyl in a voice
of awe.

Judith covered her face with her hands, and turned away trembling, and
walked out, while all looked upon her as a thing accursed.

Of her subsequent life, her folly, her wantonness, her disgrace, her
poverty, her wanderings, her wretched death, let others tell.

But these Normans believed that the curse of Heaven was upon her from that
day. And the best of them believed likewise that Waltheof's murder was the
reason that William, her uncle, prospered no more in life.

"Ah, saucy sir," said Alftruda to Ulfketyl, as she went out, "there is one
waiting at Peterborough now who will teach thee manners,--Ingulf of
Fontenelle, Abbot, in thy room."

"Does Hereward know that?" asked Ulfketyl, looking keenly at her.

"What is that to thee?" said she, fiercely, and flung out of the minster.
But Hereward did not know. There were many things abroad of which she told
him nothing.

They went back and were landed at Deeping town, and making their way along
the King Street, or old Roman road, to Bourne. Thereon a man met them,
running. They had best stay where they were. The Frenchmen were out, and
there was fighting up in Bourne.

Alftruda's knights wanted to push on, to see after the Bourne folk;
Judith's knights wanted to push on to help the French; and the two parties
were ready to fight each other. There was a great tumult. The ladies had
much ado to still it.

Alftruda said that it might be but a countryman's rumor; that, at least,
it was shame to quarrel with their guests. At last it was agreed that two
knights should gallop on into Bourne, and bring back news.

But those knights never came back. So the whole body moved on Bourne, and
there they found out the news for themselves.

Hereward had gone home as soon as they had departed, and sat down to eat
and drink. His manner was sad and strange. He drank much at the midday
meal, and then lay down to sleep, setting guards as usual.

After a while he leapt up with a shriek and a shudder.

They ran to him, asking whether he was ill.

"Ill? No. Yes. Ill at heart. I have had a dream,--an ugly dream. I thought
that all the men I ever slew on earth came to me with their wounds all
gaping, and cried at me, 'Our luck then, thy luck now.' Chaplain! is there
not a verse somewhere,--Uncle Brand said it to me on his deathbed,--'Whoso
sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed'?"

"Surely the master is fey," whispered Gwenoch in fear to the chaplain.
"Answer him out of Scripture."

"Text? None such that I know of," quoth Priest Ailward, a graceless fellow
who had taken Leofric's place. "If that were the law, it would be but few
honest men that would die in their beds. Let us drink, and drive girls'
fancies out of our heads."

So they drank again; and Hereward fell asleep once more.

"It is thy turn to watch, Priest," said Gwenoch to Ailward. "So keep the
door well, for I am worn out with hunting," and so fell asleep.

Ailward shuffled into his harness, and went to the door. The wine was
heady; the sun was hot. In a few minutes he was asleep likewise.

Hereward slept, who can tell how long? But at last there was a bustle, a
heavy fall; and waking with a start, he sprang up. He saw Ailward lying
dead across the gate, and above him a crowd of fierce faces, some of which
he knew too well. He saw Ivo Taillebois; he saw Oger; he saw his
fellow-Breton, Sir Raoul de Dol; he saw Sir Ascelin; he saw Sir Aswa,
Thorold's man; he saw Sir Hugh of Evermue, his own son-in-law; and with
them he saw, or seemed to see, the Ogre of Cornwall, and O'Brodar of
Ivark, and Dirk Hammerhand of Walcheren, and many another old foe long
underground; and in his ear rang the text,--"Whoso sheddeth man's blood,
by man shall his blood be shed." And Hereward knew that his end was come.

There was no time to put on mail or helmet. He saw the old sword and
shield hang on a perch, and tore them down. As he girded the sword on
Winter sprang to his side.

"I have three lances,--two for me and one for you, and we can hold the
door against twenty."

"Till they fire the house over our heads. Shall Hereward die like a wolf
in a cave? Forward, all Hereward's men!"

And he rushed out upon his fate. No man followed him, save Winter. The
rest, disperst, unarmed, were running hither and thither helplessly.

"Brothers in arms, and brothers in Valhalla!" shouted Winter as he rushed
after him.

A knight was running to and fro in the Court, shouting Hereward's name.
"Where is the villain? Wake! We have caught thee asleep at last."

"I am out," quoth Hereward, as the man almost stumbled against him; "and
this is in."

And through shield, hauberk, and body, as says Gaima, went Hereward's
javelin, while all drew back, confounded for the moment at that mighty
stroke.

"Felons!" shouted Hereward, "your king has given me his truce; and do you
dare break my house, and kill my folk? Is that your Norman law? And is
this your Norman honor?--To take a man unawares over his meat? Come on,
traitors all, and get what you can of a naked man; [Footnote: i. e.
without armor.] you will buy it dear--Guard my back, Winter!"

And he ran right at the press of knights; and the fight began.

"He gored them like a wood-wild boar,
As long as that lance might endure,"

says Gaimar.

"And when that lance did break in hand,
Full fell enough he smote with brand."

And as he hewed on silently, with grinding teeth and hard, glittering
eyes, of whom did he think? Of Alftruda?

Not so. But of that pale ghost, with great black hollow eyes, who sat in
Crowland, with thin bare feet, and sackcloth on her tender limbs,
watching, praying, longing, loving, uncomplaining. That ghost had been for
many a month the background of all his thoughts and dreams. It was so
clear before his mind's eye now, that, unawares to himself, he shouted
"Torfrida!" as he struck, and struck the harder at the sound of his old
battle-cry.

And now he is all wounded and be-bled; and Winter, who has fought back to
back with him, has fallen on his face; and Hereward stands alone, turning
from side to side, as he sweeps his sword right and left till the forest
rings with the blows, but staggering as he turns. Within a ring of eleven
corpses he stands. Who will go in and make the twelfth?

A knight rushes in, to fall headlong down, cloven through the helm: but
Hereward's blade snaps short, and he hurls it away as his foes rush in
with a shout of joy. He tears his shield from his left arm, and with it,
says Gaimar, brains two more.

But the end is come. Taillebois and Evermue are behind him now; four
lances are through his back, and bear him down to his knees.

"Cut off his head, Breton!" shouted Ivo. Raoul de Dol rushed forward,
sword in hand. At that cry Hereward lifted up his dying head. One stroke
more ere it was all done forever.

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