Book: Hereward, The Last of the English

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And with a shout of "Torfrida!" which made the Bruneswald ring, he hurled
the shield full in the Breton's face, and fell forward dead.

The knights drew their lances from that terrible corpse slowly and with
caution, as men who have felled a bear, yet dare not step within reach of
the seemingly lifeless paw.

"The dog died hard," said Ivo. "Lucky for us that Sir Ascelin had news of
his knights being gone to Crowland. If he had had them to back him, we had
not done this deed to-day."

"I will make sure," said Ascelin, as he struck off the once fair and
golden head.

"Ho, Breton," cried Ivo, "the villain is dead. Get up, man, and see for
yourself. What ails him?"

But when they lifted up Raoul de Dol his brains were running down his
face; and all men stood astonished at that last mighty stroke.

"That blow," said Ascelin, "will be sung hereafter by minstrel and maiden
as the last blow of the last Englishman. Knights, we have slain a better
knight than ourselves. If there had been three more such men in this
realm, they would have driven us and King William back again into the
sea."

So said Ascelin; those words of his, too, were sung by many a jongleur,
Norman as well as English, in the times that were to come.

"Likely enough," said Ivo; "but that is the more reason why we should set
that head of his up over the hall-door, as a warning to these English
churls that their last man is dead, and their last stake thrown and lost."

So perished "the last of the English."

It was the third day. The Normans were drinking in the hall of Bourne,
casting lots among themselves who should espouse the fair Alftruda, who
sat weeping within over the headless corpse; when in the afternoon a
servant came in, and told them how a barge full of monks had come to the
shore, and that they seemed to be monks from Crowland. Ivo Taillebois bade
drive them back again into the barge with whips. But Hugh of Evermue spoke
up.

"I am lord and master in Bourne this day, and if Ivo have a quarrel
against St. Guthlac, I have none. This Ingulf of Fontenelle, the new abbot
who has come thither since old Ulfketyl was sent to prison, is a loyal
man, and a friend of King William's, and my friend he shall be till he
behaves himself as my foe. Let them come up in peace."

Taillebois growled and cursed: but the monks came up, and into the hall;
and at their head Ingulf himself, to receive whom all men rose, save
Taillebois.

"I come," said Ingulf, in most courtly French, "noble knights, to ask a
boon and in the name of the Most Merciful, on behalf of a noble and
unhappy lady. Let it be enough to have avenged yourself on the living.
Gentlemen and Christians war not against the dead."

"No, no, Master Abbot!" shouted Taillebois; "Waltheof is enough to keep
Crowland in miracles for the present. You shall not make a martyr of
another Saxon churl. He wants the barbarian's body, knights, and you will
be fools if you let him have it."

"Churl? barbarian?" said a haughty voice; and a nun stepped forward who
had stood just behind Ingulf. She was clothed entirely in black. Her bare
feet were bleeding from the stones; her hand, as she lifted it, was as
thin as a skeleton's.

She threw back her veil, and showed to the knights what had been once the
famous beauty of Torfrida.

But the beauty was long past away. Her hair was white as snow; her cheeks
were fallen in. Her hawk-like features were all sharp and hard. Only in
their hollow sockets burned still the great black eyes, so fiercely that
all men turned uneasily from her gaze.

"Churl? barbarian?" she said, slowly and quietly, but with an intensity
which was more terrible than rage. "Who gives such names to one who was as
much better born and better bred than those who now sit here, as he was
braver and more terrible than they? The base wood-cutter's son? The
upstart who would have been honored had he taken service as yon dead man's
groom?"

"Talk to me so, and my stirrup leathers shall make acquaintance with your
sides," said Taillebois.

"Keep them for your wife. Churl? Barbarian? There is not a man within this
hall who is not a barbarian compared with him. Which of you touched the
harp like him? Which of you, like him, could move all hearts with song?
Which of you knows all tongues from Lapland to Provence? Which of you has
been the joy of ladies' bowers, the counsellor of earls and heroes, the
rival of a mighty king? Which of you will compare yourself with him,--whom
you dared not even strike, you and your robber crew, fairly in front, but,
skulked round him till he fell pecked to death by you, as Lapland
Skratlings peck to death the bear. Ten years ago he swept this hall of
such as you, and hung their heads upon yon gable outside; and were he
alive but one five minutes again, this hall would be right cleanly swept
again! Give me his body,--or bear forever the name of cowards, and
Torfrida's curse."

And she fixed her terrible eyes first on one, and then on another, calling
them by name.

"Ivo Taillebois,--basest of all--"

"Take the witch's accursed eyes off me!" and he covered his face with his
hands. "I shall be overlooked,--planet struck. Hew the witch down! Take
her away!"

"Hugh of Evermue,--the dead man's daughter is yours, and the dead man's
lands. Are not these remembrances enough of him? Are you so fond of his
memory that you need his corpse likewise?"

"Give it her! Give it her!" said he, hanging down his head like a rated
cur.

"Ascelin of Lincoln, once Ascelin of Ghent,--there was a time when you
would have done--what would you not?--for one glance of Torfrida's
eyes.--Stay. Do not deceive yourself, fair sir, Torfrida means to ask no
favor of you, or of living man. But she commands you. Do the thing she
bids, or with one glance of her eye she sends you childless to your
grave."

"Madam! Lady Torfrida! What is there I would not do for you? What have I
done now, save avenge your great wrong?"

Torfrida made no answer, but fixed steadily on him eyes which widened
every moment.

"But, madam,"--and he turned shrinking from the fancied spell,--"what
would you have? The--the corpse? It is in the keeping of--of another
lady."

"So?" said Torfrida, quietly. "Leave her to me"; and she swept past them
all, and flung open the bower door at their backs, discovering Alftruda
sitting by the dead.

The ruffians were so utterly appalled, not only by the false powers of
magic, but by veritable powers of majesty and eloquence, that they let her
do what she would.

"Out!" cried she, using a short and terrible epithet. "Out, siren, with
fairy's face and tail of fiend, and leave the husband with his wife!"

Alftruda looked up, shrieked; and then, with the sudden passion of a weak
nature, drew a little knife, and sprang up.

Ivo made a coarse jest. The Abbot sprang in: "For the sake of all holy
things, let there be no more murder here!"

Torfrida smiled, and fixed her snake's eye upon her wretched rival.

"Out! woman, and choose thee a new husband among these French gallants,
ere I blast thee from head to foot with the leprosy of Naaman the Syrian."

Alftruda shuddered, and fled shrieking into an inner room.

"Now, knights, give me--that which hangs outside."

Ascelin hurried out, glad to escape. In a minute he returned.

The head was already taken down. A tall lay brother, the moment he had
seen it, had climbed the gable, snatched it away, and now sat in a corner
of the yard, holding it on his knees, talking to it, chiding it, as if it
had been alive. When men had offered to take it, he had drawn a battle-axe
from under his frock, and threatened to brain all comers. And the monks
had warned off Ascelin, saying that the man was mad, and had Berserk fits
of superhuman strength and rage.

"He will give it me!" said Torfrida, and went out.

"Look at that gable, foolish head," said the madman. "Ten years agone, you
and I took down from thence another head. O foolish head, to get yourself
at last up into that same place! Why would you not be ruled by her, you
foolish golden head?"

"Martin!" said Torfrida.

"Take it and comb it, mistress, as you used to do. Comb out the golden
locks again, fit to shine across the battle-field. She has let them get
all tangled into elf-knots, that lazy slut within."

Torfrida took it from his hands, dry-eyed, and went in.

Then the monks silently took up the bier, and all went forth, and down the
hill toward the fen. They laid the corpse within the barge, and slowly
rowed away.

And on by Porsad and by Asendyke,
By winding reaches on, and shining meres
Between gray reed-ronds and green alder-beds,
A dirge of monks and wail of women rose
In vain to Heaven for the last Englishman;
Then died far off within the boundless mist,
And left the Norman master of the land.

So Torfrida took the corpse home to Crowland, and buried it in the choir,
near the blessed martyr St. Waltheof; after which she did not die, but
lived on many years, [Footnote: If Ingulf can be trusted, Torfrida died
about A. D. 1085.] spending all day in nursing and feeding the Countess
Godiva, and lying all night on Hereward's tomb, and praying that he might
find grace and mercy in that day.

And at last Godiva died; and they took her away and buried her with great
pomp in her own minster church of Coventry.

And after that Torfrida died likewise; because she had nothing left for
which to live. And they laid her in Hereward's grave, and their dust is
mingled to this day.

And Leofric the priest lived on to a good old age, and above all things he
remembered the deeds and the sins of his master, and wrote them in a book,
and this is what remains thereof.

But when Martin Lightfoot died, no man has said; for no man in those days
took account of such poor churls and running serving-men.

And Hereward's comrades were all scattered abroad, some maimed, some
blinded, some with tongues cut out, to beg by the wayside, or crawl into
convents, and then die; while their sisters and daughters, ladies born and
bred, were the slaves of grooms and scullions from beyond the sea.

And so, as sang Thorkel Skallason,--

"Cold heart and bloody hand
Now rule English land." [Footnote: Laing's Heimskringla.]

And after that things waxed even worse and worse, for sixty years and
more; all through the reigns of the two Williams, and of Henry Beauclerc,
and of Stephen; till men saw visions and portents, and thought that the
foul fiend was broken loose on earth. And they whispered oftener and
oftener that the soul of Hereward haunted the Bruneswald, where he loved
to hunt the dun deer and the roe. And in the Bruneswald, when Henry of
Poitou was made abbot, [Footnote: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A. D. 1127.] men
saw--let no man think lightly of the marvel which we are about to relate,
for it was well known all over the country--upon the Sunday, when men
sing, "Exsurge quare, O Domine," many hunters hunting, black, and tall,
and loathly, and their hounds were black and ugly with wide eyes, and they
rode on black horses and black bucks. And they saw them in the very
deer-park of the town of Peterborough, and in all the woods to Stamford;
and the monks heard the blasts of the horns which they blew in the night.
Men of truth kept watch upon them, and said that there might be well about
twenty or thirty horn-blowers. This was seen and heard all that Lent until
Easter, and the Norman monks of Peterborough said how it was Hereward,
doomed to wander forever with Apollyon and all his crew, because he had
stolen the riches of the Golden Borough: but the poor folk knew better,
and said that the mighty outlaw was rejoicing in the chase, blowing his
horn for Englishmen to rise against the French; and therefore it was that
he was seen first on "Arise, O Lord" Sunday.

But they were so sore trodden down that they could never rise; for the
French [Footnote: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A. D. 1137.] had filled the land
full of castles. They greatly oppressed the wretched people by making them
work at these castles; and when the castles were finished, they filled
them with devils and evil men. They took those whom they suspected of
having any goods, both men and women, and they put them in prison for
their gold and silver, and tortured them with pains unspeakable, for never
were any martyrs tormented as these were. They hung some by their feet,
and smoked them with foul smoke; some by the thumbs, or by the head, and
put burning things on their feet. They put a knotted string round their
heads, and twisted it till it went into the brain. They put them in
dungeons wherein were adders, and snakes, and toads, and thus wore them
out. Some they put into a crucet-house,--that is, into a chest that was
short and narrow, and they put sharp stones therein, and crushed the man
so that they broke all his bones. There were hateful and grim things
called Sachenteges in many of the castles, which two or three men had
enough to do to carry. This Sachentege was made thus: It was fastened to a
beam, having a sharp iron to go round a man's throat and neck, so that he
might no ways sit, nor lie, nor sleep, but he must bear all the iron. Many
thousands they wore out with hunger.... They were continually levying a
tax from the towns, which they called truserie, and when the wretched
townsfolk had no more to give, then burnt they all the towns, so that well
mightest thou walk a whole day's journey or ever thou shouldest see a man
settled in a town, or its lands tilled....

"Then was corn dear, and flesh, and cheese, and butter, for there was none
in the land. Wretched men starved with hunger. Some lived on alms who had
been once rich. Some fled the country. Never was there more misery, and
never heathens acted worse than these."

For now the sons of the Church's darlings, of the Crusaders whom the Pope
had sent, beneath a gonfalon blessed by him, to destroy the liberties of
England, turned, by a just retribution, upon that very Norman clergy who
had abetted all their iniquities in the name of Rome. "They spared neither
church nor churchyard, but took all that was valuable therein, and then
burned the church and all together. Neither did they spare the lands of
bishops, nor of abbots, nor of priests; but they robbed the monks and
clergy, and every man plundered his neighbor as much as he could. If two
or three men came riding to a town, all the townsfolk fled before them,
and thought that they were robbers. The bishops and clergy were forever
cursing them; but this to them was nothing, for they were all accursed and
forsworn and reprobate. The earth bare no corn: you might as well have
tilled the sea, for all the land was ruined by such deeds, and it was said
openly that Christ and his saints slept."

And so was avenged the blood of Harold and his brothers, of Edwin and
Morcar, of Waltheof and Hereward.

And those who had the spirit of Hereward in them fled to the merry
greenwood, and became bold outlaws, with Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John,
Adam Bell, and Clym of the Cleugh, and William of Cloudeslee; and watched
with sullen joy the Norman robbers tearing in pieces each other, and the
Church who had blest their crime.

And they talked and sung of Hereward, and all his doughty deeds, over the
hearth in lone farm-houses, or in the outlaw's lodge beneath the hollins
green; and all the burden of their song was, "Ah that Hereward were alive
again!" for they knew not that Hereward was alive forevermore; that only
his husk and shell lay mouldering there in Crowland choir; that above
them, and around them, and in them, destined to raise them out of that
bitter bondage, and mould them into a great nation, and the parents of
still greater nations in lands as yet unknown, brooded the immortal spirit
of Hereward, now purged from all earthly dross, even the spirit of
Freedom, which can never die.




CHAPTER XLIII.

HOW DEEPING FEN WAS DRAINED.


Ill war and disorder, ruin and death, cannot last forever. They are by
their own nature exceptional and suicidal, and spend themselves with what
they feed on. And then the true laws of God's universe, peace and order,
usefulness and life, will reassert themselves, as they have been waiting
all along to do, hid in God's presence from the strife of men.

And even so it was with Bourne.

Nearly eighty years after, in the year of Grace 1155, there might have
been seen sitting, side by side and hand in hand, upon a sunny bench on
the Bruneswald slope, in the low December sun, an old knight and an old
lady, the master and mistress of Bourne.

Much had changed since Hereward's days. The house below had been raised a
whole story. There were fresh herbs and flowers in the garden, unknown at
the time of the Conquest. But the great change was in the fen, especially
away toward Deeping on the southern horizon.

Where had been lonely meres, foul watercourses, stagnant slime, there were
now great dikes, rich and fair corn and grass lands, rows of pure white
cottages. The newly-drained land swarmed with stocks of new breeds: horses
and sheep from Flanders, cattle from Normandy; for Richard de Rulos was
the first--as far as history tells--of that noble class of agricultural
squires, who are England's blessing and England's pride.

"For this Richard de Rulos," says Ingulf, or whoever wrote in his name,
"who had married the daughter and heiress of Hugh of Evermue, Lord of
Bourne and Deeping, being a man of agricultural pursuits, got permission
from the monks of Crowland, for twenty marks of silver, to enclose as much
as he would of the common marshes. So he shut out the Welland by a strong
embankment, and building thereon numerous tenements and cottages, in a
short time he formed a large 'vill,' marked out gardens, and cultivated
fields; while, by shutting out the river, he found in the meadow land,
which had been lately deep lakes and impassable marshes (wherefore the
place was called Deeping, the deep meadow), most fertile fields and
desirable lands, and out of sloughs and bogs accursed made quiet a garden
of pleasaunce."

So there the good man, the beginner of the good work of centuries, sat
looking out over the fen, and listening to the music which came on the
southern breeze--above the low of the kine, and the clang of the wild-fowl
settling down to rest--from the bells of Crowland minster far away.

They were not the same bells which tolled for Hereward and Torfrida. Those
had run down in molten streams upon that fatal night when Abbot Ingulf
leaped out of bed to see the vast wooden sanctuary wrapt in one sheet of
roaring flame, from the carelessness of a plumber who had raked the ashes
over his fire in the bell-tower, and left it to smoulder through the
night.

Then perished all the riches of Crowland; its library too, of more than
seven hundred volumes, with that famous Nadir, or Orrery, the like whereof
was not in all England, wherein the seven planets were represented, each
in their proper metals. And even worse, all the charters of the monastery
perished, a loss which involved the monks thereof in centuries of
lawsuits, and compelled them to become as industrious and skilful forgers
of documents as were to be found in the minsters of the middle age.

But Crowland minster had been rebuilt in greater glory than ever, by the
help of the Norman gentry round. Abbot Ingulf, finding that St. Guthlac's
plain inability to take care of himself had discredited him much in the
fen-men's eyes, fell back, Norman as he was, on the virtues of the holy
martyr, St. Waltheof, whose tomb he opened with due reverence, and found
the body as whole and uncorrupted as on the day on which it was buried:
and the head united to the body, while a fine crimson line around the neck
was the only sign remaining of his decollation.

On seeing which Ingulf "could not contain himself for joy: and
interrupting the response which the brethren were singing, with a loud
voice began the hymn 'Te Deum Laudamus,' on which the chanter, taking it
up, enjoined the rest of the brethren to sing it." After which Ingulf--who
had never seen Waltheof in life, discovered that it was none other than he
whom he had seen in a vision at Fontenelle, as an earl most gorgeously
arrayed, with a torc of gold about his neck, and with him an abbot, two
bishops, and two saints, the two former being Usfran and Ausbert, the
abbots, St. Wandresigil of Fontenelle, and the two saints, of course St.
Guthlac and St. Neot.

Whereon, crawling on his hands and knees, he kissed the face of the holy
martyr, and "perceived such a sweet odor proceeding from the holy body, as
he never remembered to have smelt, either in the palace of the king, or in
Syria with all its aromatic herbs."

_Quid plura?_ What more was needed for a convent of burnt-out monks?
St. Waltheof was translated in state to the side of St. Guthlac; and the
news of this translation of the holy martyr being spread throughout the
country, multitudes of the faithful flocked daily to the tomb, and
offering up their vows there, tended in a great degree "to resuscitate our
monastery."

But more. The virtues of St. Waltheof were too great not to turn
themselves, or be turned, to some practical use. So if not in the days of
Ingulf, at least in those of Abbot Joffrid who came after him, St.
Waltheof began, says Peter of Blois, to work wonderful deeds. "The blind
received their sight, the deaf their hearing, the lame their power of
walking, and the dumb their power of speech; while each day troops
innumerable of other sick persons were arriving by every road, as to the
very fountain of their safety, ... and by the offerings of the pilgrims
who came flocking in from every part, the revenues of the monastery were
increased in no small degree."

Only one wicked Norman monk of St. Alban's, Audwin by name, dared to
dispute the sanctity of the martyr, calling him a wicked traitor who had
met with his deserts. In vain did Abbot Joffrid, himself a Norman from St.
Evroult, expostulate with the inconvenient blasphemer. He launched out
into invective beyond measure; till on the spot, in presence of the said
father, he was seized with such a stomach-ache, that he went home to St.
Alban's, and died in a few days; after which all went well with Crowland,
and the Norman monks who worked the English martyr to get money out of the
English whom they had enslaved.

And yet,--so strangely mingled for good and evil are the works of
men,--that lying brotherhood of Crowland set up, in those very days, for
pure love of learning and of teaching learning, a little school of letters
in a poor town hard by, which became, under their auspices, the University
of Cambridge.

So the bells of Crowland were restored, more melodious than ever; and
Richard of Rulos doubtless had his share in their restoration. And that
day they were ringing with a will, and for a good reason; for that day had
come the news, that Henry Plantagenet was crowned king of England.

"'Lord,'" said the good old knight, "'now lettest thou thy servant depart
in peace.' This day, at last, he sees an English king head the English
people."

"God grant," said the old lady, "that he may be such a lord to England as
thou hast been to Bourne."

"If he will be,--and better far will he be, by God's grace, from what I
hear of him, than ever I have been,--he must learn that which I learnt
from thee,--to understand these Englishmen, and know what stout and trusty
prudhommes they are all, down to the meanest serf, when once one can humor
their sturdy independent tempers."

"And he must learn, too, the lesson which thou didst teach me, when I
would have had thee, in the pride of youth, put on the magic armor of my
ancestors, and win me fame in every tournament and battle-field. Blessed
be the day when Richard of Rulos said to me, 'If others dare to be men of
war, I dare more; for I dare to be a man of peace. Have patience with me,
and I will win for thee and for myself a renown more lasting, before God
and man, than ever was won with lance!' Do you remember those words,
Richard mine?"

The old man leant his head upon his hands. "It may be that not those
words, but the deeds which God has caused to follow them, may, by Christ's
merits, bring us a short purgatory and a long heaven."

"Amen. Only whatever grief we may endure in the next life for our sins,
may we endure it as we have the griefs of this life, hand in hand."

"Amen, Torfrida. There is one thing more to do before we die. The tomb in
Crowland. Ever since the fire blackened it, it has seemed to me too poor
and mean to cover the dust which once held two such noble souls. Let us
send over to Normandy for fair white stone of Caen, and let carve a tomb
worthy of thy grandparents."

"And what shall we write thereon?"

"What but that which is there already? 'Here lies the last of the
English.'"

"Not so. We will write,--'Here lies the last of the old English.' But upon
thy tomb, when thy time comes, the monks of Crowland shall write,--'Here
lies the first of the new English; who, by the inspiration of God, began
to drain the Fens.'"

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