Book: Hereward, The Last of the English

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"Is there a priest here?" asked Hereward, hurriedly.

The old man looked up, shook his head, and answered in Cornish.

"Speak to him in Latin, Martin! May be he will understand that."

Martin spoke. "My lord, here, wants a priest to shrive him, and that
quickly. He is going to fight the great tyrant Ironhook, as you call him."

"Ironhook?" answered the priest in good Latin enough. "And he so young!
God help him, he is a dead man! What is this,--a fresh soul sent to its
account by the hands of that man of Belial? Cannot he entreat him,--can he
not make peace, and save his young life? He is but a stripling, and that
man, like Goliath of old, a man of war from his youth up."

"And my master," said Martin Lightfoot, proudly, "is like young
David,--one that can face a giant and kill him; for he has slain, like
David, his lion and his bear ere now. At least, he is one that will
neither make peace, nor entreat the face of living man. So shrive him
quickly, Master Priest, and let him be gone to his work."

Poor Martin Lightfoot spoke thus bravely only to keep up his spirits and
his young lord's; for, in spite of his confidence in Hereward's prowess,
he had given him up for a lost man: and the tears ran down his rugged
cheeks, as the old priest, rising up and seizing Hereward's two hands in
his, besought him, with the passionate and graceful eloquence of his race,
to have mercy upon his own youth.

Hereward understood his meaning, though not his words.

"Tell him," he said to Martin, "that fight I must, and tell him that
shrive me he must, and that quickly. Tell him how the fellow met me in the
wood below just now, and would have slain me there, unarmed as I was; and
how, when I told him it was a shame to strike a naked man, he told me he
would give me but one hour's grace to go back, on the faith of a
gentleman, for my armor and weapons, and meet him there again, to die by
his hand. So shrive me quick, Sir Priest."

Hereward knelt down. Martin Lightfoot knelt down by him, and with a
trembling voice began to interpret for him.

"What does he say?" asked Hereward, as the priest murmured something to
himself.

"He said," quoth Martin, now fairly blubbering, "that, fair and young as
you are, your shrift should be as short and as clean as David's."

Hereward was touched. "Anything but that," said he, smiting on his breast,
"Mea culpa,--mea culpa,--mea maxima culpa."

"Tell him how I robbed my father."

The priest groaned as Martin did so.

"And how I mocked at my mother, and left her in a rage, without ever a
kind word between us. And how I have slain I know not how many men in
battle, though that, I trust, need not lay heavily on my soul, seeing that
I killed them all in fair fight."

Again the priest groaned.

"And how I robbed a certain priest of his money and gave it away to my
housecarles."

Here the priest groaned more bitterly still.

"O my son! my son! where hast thou found time to lay all these burdens on
thy young soul?"

"It will take less time," said Martin, bluntly, "for you to take the
burdens off again."

"But I dare not absolve him for robbing a priest. Heaven Help him! He must
go to the bishop for that. He is more fit to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem
than to battle."

"He has no time," quoth Martin, "for bishops or Jerusalem."

"Tell him," says Hereward, "that in this purse is all I have, that in it
he will find sixty silver pennies, beside two strange coins of gold."

"Sir Priest," said Martin Lightfoot, taking the purse from Hereward, and
keeping it in his own hand, "there are in this bag moneys."

Martin had no mind to let the priest into the secret of the state of their
finances.

"And tell him," continued Hereward, "that if I fall in this battle I give
him all that money, that he may part it among the poor for the good of my
soul."

"Pish!" said Martin to his lord; "that is paying him for having you
killed. You should pay him for keeping you alive." And without waiting for
the answer, he spoke in Latin,--

"And if he comes back safe from this battle, he will give you ten pennies
for yourself and your church, Priest, and therefore expects you to pray
your very loudest while he is gone."

"I will pray, I will pray," said the holy man; "I will wrestle in prayer.
Ah that he could slay the wicked, and reward the proud according to his
deservings! Ah that he could rid me and my master, and my young lady, of
this son of Belial,--this devourer of widows and orphans,--this slayer of
the poor and needy, who fills this place with innocent blood,--him of whom
it is written, 'They stretch forth their mouth unto the heaven, and their
tongue goeth through the world. Therefore fall the people unto them, and
thereout suck they no small advantage.' I will shrive him, shrive him of
all save robbing the priest, and for that he must go to the bishop, if he
live; and if not, the Lord have mercy on his soul."

And so, weeping and trembling, the good old man pronounced the words of
absolution.

Hereward rose, thanked him, and then hurried out in silence.

"You will pray your very loudest, Priest," said Martin, as he followed his
young lord.

"I will, I will," quoth he, and kneeling down began to chant that noble
seventy-third Psalm, "Quam bonus Israel," which he had just so fitly
quoted.

"Thou gavest him the bag, Martin?" said Hereward, as they hurried on.

"You are not dead yet. 'No pay, no play,' is as good a rule for priest as
for layman."

"Now then, Martin Lightfoot, good-bye. Come not with me. It must never be
said, even slanderously, that I brought two into the field against one;
and if I die, Martin--"

"You won't die!" said Lightfoot, shutting his teeth.

"If I die, go back to my people somehow, and tell them that I died like a
true earl's son."

Hereward held out his hand; Martin fell on his knees and kissed it;
watched him with set teeth till he disappeared in the wood; and then
started forward and entered the bushes at a different spot.

"I must be nigh at hand to see fair play," he muttered to himself, "in
case any of his ruffians be hanging about. Fair play I'll see, and fair
play I'll give, too, for the sake of my lord's honor, though I be bitterly
loath to do it. So many times as I have been a villain when it was of no
use, why mayn't I be one now, when it would serve the purpose indeed? Why
did we ever come into this accursed place? But one thing I will do," said
he, as he ensconced himself under a thick holly, whence he could see the
meeting of the combatants upon an open lawn some twenty yards away; "if
that big bull-calf kills my master, and I do not jump on his back and pick
his brains out with this trusty steel of mine, may my right arm--"

And Martin Lightfoot swore a fearful oath, which need not here be written.

The priest had just finished his chant of the seventy-third Psalm, and had
betaken himself in his spiritual warfare, as it was then called, to the
equally apposite fifty-second, "Quid gloriaris?"

"Why boastest thou thyself, thou tyrant, that thou canst do mischief,
whereas the goodness of God endureth yet daily?"

"Father! father!" cried a soft voice in the doorway, "where are you?"

And in hurried the Princess.

"Hide this," she said, breathless, drawing from beneath her mantle a huge
sword; "hide it, where no one dare touch it, under the altar behind the
holy rood: no place too secret."

"What is it?" asked the priest, springing up from his knees.

"His sword,--the Ogre's,--his magic sword, which kills whomsoever it
strikes. I coaxed the wretch to let me have it last night when he was
tipsy, for fear he should quarrel with the young stranger; and I have kept
it from him ever since by one excuse or another; and now he has sent one
of his ruffians in for it, saying, that if I do not give it up at once he
will come back and kill me."

"He dare not do that," said the priest.

"What is there that he dare not?" said she. "Hide it at once; I know that
he wants it to fight with this Hereward."

"If he wants it for that," said the priest, "it is too late; for half an
hour is past since Hereward went to meet him."

"And you let him go? You did not persuade him, stop him? You let him go
hence to his death?"

In vain the good man expostulated and explained that it was no fault of
his.

"You must come with me this instant to my father,--to them; they must be
parted. They shall be parted. If you dare not, I dare. I will throw myself
between them, and he that strikes the other shall strike me."

And she hurried the priest out of the house, down the knoll, and across
the yard. There they found others on the same errand. The news that a
battle was toward had soon spread, and the men-at-arms were hurrying down
to the fight; kept back, however, by Alef, who strode along at their head.

Alef was sorely perplexed in mind. He had taken, as all honest men did, a
great liking to Hereward. Moreover, he was his kinsman and his guest. Save
him he would if he could but how to save him without mortally offending
his tyrant Ironhook he could not see. At least he would exert what little
power he had, and prevent, if possible, his men-at-arms from helping their
darling leader against the hapless lad.

Alef's perplexity was much increased when his daughter bounded towards
him, seizing him by the arm, and hurried him on, showing by look and word
which of the combatants she favored, so plainly that the ruffians behind
broke into scornful murmurs. They burst through the bushes. Martin
Lightfoot, happily, heard them coming, and had just time to slip away
noiselessly, like a rabbit, to the other part of the cover.

The combat seemed at the first glance to be one between a grown man and a
child, so unequal was the size of the combatants. But the second look
showed that the advantage was by no means with Ironhook. Stumbling to and
fro with the broken shaft of a javelin sticking in his thigh, he vainly
tried to seize and crush Hereward in his enormous arms. Hereward,
bleeding, but still active and upright, broke away, and sprang round him,
watching for an opportunity to strike a deadly blow. The housecarles
rushed forward with yells. Alef shouted to the combatants to desist; but
ere the party could reach them, Hereward's opportunity had come. Ironhook,
after a fruitless lunge, stumbled forward. Hereward leapt aside, and
spying an unguarded spot below the corslet, drove his sword deep into the
giant's body, and rolled him over upon the sward. Then arose shouts of
fury.

"Foul play!" cried one.

And others taking up the cry, called out, "Sorcery!" and "Treason!"

Hereward stood over Ironhook as he lay writhing and foaming on the ground.

"Killed by a boy at last!" groaned he. "If I had but had my own sword,--my
Brain-biter which that witch stole from me but last night!"--and amid foul
curses and bitter tears of shame his mortal spirit fled to its doom.

The housecarles rushed in on Hereward, who had enough to do to keep them
at arm's length by long sweeps of his sword.

Alef entreated, threatened, promised a fair trial if the men would give
fair play; when, to complete the confusion, the Princess threw herself
upon the corpse, shrieking and tearing her hair; and to Hereward's
surprise and disgust, bewailed the prowess and the virtues of the dead,
calling upon all present to avenge his murder.

Hereward vowed inwardly that he would never again trust woman's fancy or
fight in woman's quarrel. He was now nigh at his wits' end; the
housecarles had closed round him in a ring with the intention of seizing
him; and however well he might defend his front, he might be crippled at
any moment from behind: but in the very nick of time Martin Lightfoot
burst through the crowd, set himself heel to heel with his master, and
broke out, not with threats, but with a good-humored laugh.

"Here is a pretty coil about a red-headed brute of a Pict! Danes, Ostmen,"
he cried, "are you not ashamed to call such a fellow your lord, when you
have such a true earl's son as this to lead you if you will?"

The Ostmen in the company looked at each other. Martin Lightfoot saw that
his appeal to the antipathies of race had told, and followed it up by a
string of witticisms upon the Pictish nation in general, of which the only
two fit for modern ears to be set down were the two old stories, that the
Picts had feet so large that they used to lie upon their backs and hold up
their legs to shelter them from the sun; and that when killed, they could
not fall down, but died as they were, all standing.

"So that the only foul play I can see is, that my master shoved the fellow
over after he had stabbed him, instead of leaving him to stand upright
there, like one of your Cornish Dolmens, till his flesh should fall off
his bones."

Hereward saw the effect of Martin's words, and burst out in Danish
likewise.

"Look at me!" he said; "I am Hereward the outlaw, I am the champion, I am
the Berserker, I am the Viking, I am the land thief, the sea thief, the
ravager of the world, the bear-slayer, the ogre-killer, the
raven-fattener, the darling of the wolf, the curse of the widow. Touch me,
and I will give you to the raven and to the wolf, as I have this ogre. Be
my men, and follow me over the swan's road, over the whale's bath, over
the long-snake's leap, to the land where the sea meets the sun, and golden
apples hang on every tree; and we will freight our ships with Moorish
maidens, and the gold of Cadiz and Algiers."

"Hark to the Viking! Hark to the right earl's son!" shouted some of the
Danes, whose blood had been stirred many a time before by such wild words,
and on whom Hereward's youth and beauty had their due effect. And now the
counsels of the ruffians being divided, the old priest gained courage to
step in. Let them deliver Hereward and his serving man into his custody.
He would bring them forth on the morrow, and there should be full
investigation and fair trial. And so Hereward and Martin, who both refused
stoutly to give up their arms, were marched back into the town, locked in
the little church, and left to their meditations.

Hereward sat down on the pavement and cursed the Princess. Martin
Lightfoot took off his master's corslet, and, as well as the darkness
would allow, bound up his wounds, which happily were not severe.

"Were I you," said he at last, "I should keep my curses till I saw the end
of this adventure."

"Has not the girl betrayed me shamefully?"

"Not she. I saw her warn you, as far as looks could do, not to quarrel
with the man."

"That was because she did not know me. Little she thought that I could--"

"Don't hollo till you are out of the wood. This is a night for praying
rather than boasting."

"She cannot really love that wretch," said Hereward, after a pause. "You
saw how she mocked him."

"Women are strange things, and often tease most where they love most."

"But such a misbegotten savage."

"Women are strange things, say I, and with some a big fellow is a pretty
fellow, be he uglier than seven Ironhooks. Still, just because women are
strange things, have patience, say I."

The lock creaked, and the old priest came in. Martin leapt to the open
door; but it was slammed in his face by men outside with scornful
laughter.

The priest took Hereward's head in his hands, wept over him, blessed him
for having slain Goliath like young David, and then set food and drink
before the two; but he answered Martin's questions only with sighs and
shakings of the head.

"Let us eat and drink, then," said Martin, "and after that you, my lord,
sleep off your wounds while I watch the door. I have no fancy for these
fellows taking us unawares at night."

Martin lay quietly across the door till the small hours, listening to
every sound, till the key creaked once more in the lock. He started at the
sound, and seizing the person who entered round the neck, whispered, "One
word, and you are dead."

"Do not hurt me," half shrieked a stifled voice; and Martin Lightfoot, to
his surprise, found that he had grasped no armed man, but the slight frame
of a young girl.

"I am the Princess," she whispered; "let me in."

"A very pretty hostage for us," thought Martin, and letting her go seized
the key, locking the door in the inside.

"Take me to your master," she cried, and Martin led her up the church
wondering, but half suspecting some further trap.

"You have a dagger in your hand," said he, holding her wrist.

"I have. If I had meant to use it, it would have been used first on you.
Take it, if you like."

She hurried up to Hereward, who lay sleeping quietly on the altar-steps;
knelt by him, wrung his hands, called him her champion, her deliverer.

"I am not well awake yet," said he, coldly, "and don't know whether this
may not be a dream, as more that I have seen and heard seems to be."

"It is no dream. I am true. I was always true to you. Have I not put
myself in your power? Am I not come here to deliver you, my deliverer?"

"The tears which you shed over your ogre's corpse seem to have dried
quickly enough."

"Cruel! What else could I do? You heard him accuse me to those ruffians of
having stolen his sword. My life, my father's life, were not safe a
moment, had I not dissembled, and done the thing I loathed. Ah!" she went
on, bitterly, "you men, who rule the world and us by cruel steel, you
forget that we poor women have but one weapon left wherewith to hold our
own, and that is cunning; and are driven by you day after day to tell the
lie which we detest."

"Then you really stole his sword?"

"And hid it here, for your sake!" and she drew the weapon from behind the
altar.

"Take it. It is yours now. It is magical. Whoever smites with it, need
never smite again. Now, quick, you must be gone. But promise one thing
before you go."

"If I leave this land safe, I will do it, be it what it may. Why not come
with me, lady, and see it done?"

She laughed. "Vain boy, do you think that I love you well enough for
that?"

"I have won you, and why should I not keep you?" said Hereward, sullenly.

"Do you not know that I am betrothed to your kinsman? And--though that you
cannot know--that I love your kinsman?"

"So I have all the blows, and none of the spoil."

"Tush! you have the glory,-and the sword,--and the chance, if you will do
my bidding, of being called by all ladies a true and gentle knight, who
cared not for his own pleasure, but for deeds of chivalry. Go to my
betrothed,--to Waterford over the sea. Take him this ring, and tell him by
that token to come and claim me soon, lest he run the danger of losing me
a second time, and lose me then forever; for I am in hard case here, and
were it not for my father's sake, perhaps I might be weak enough, in spite
of what men might say, to flee with you to your kinsman across the sea."

"Trust me and come," said Hereward, whose young blood kindled with a
sudden nobleness,--"trust me, and I will treat you like my sister, like my
queen. By the holy rood above I will swear to be true to you."

"I do trust you, but it cannot be. Here is money for you in plenty to hire
a passage if you need: it is no shame to take it from me. And now one
thing more. Here is a cord,--you must bind the hands and feet of the old
priest inside, and then you must bind mine likewise."

"Never," quoth Hereward.

"It must be. How else can I explain your having got the key? I made them
give me the key on the pretence that with one who had most cause to hate
you, it would be safe; and when they come and find us in the morning I
shall tell them how I came here to stab you with my own hands,--you must
lay the dagger by me,--and how you and your man fell upon us and bound us,
and you escaped. Ah! Mary Mother," continued the maiden with a sigh, "when
shall we poor weak women have no more need of lying?"

She lay down, and Hereward, in spite of himself, gently bound her hands
and feet, kissing them as he bound them.

"I shall do well here upon the altar steps," said she. "How can I spend my
time better till the morning light than to lie here and pray?"

The old priest, who was plainly in the plot, submitted meekly to the same
fate; and Hereward and Martin Lightfoot stole out, locking the door, but
leaving the key in it outside. To scramble over the old earthwork was an
easy matter; and in a few minutes they were hurrying down the valley to
the sea, with a fresh breeze blowing behind them from the north.

"Did I not tell you, my lord," said Martin Lightfoot, "to keep your curses
till you had seen the end of this adventure?"

Hereward was silent. His brain was still whirling from the adventures of
the day, and his heart was very deeply touched. His shrift of the morning,
hurried and formal as it had been, had softened him. His danger--for he
felt how he had been face to face with death--had softened him likewise;
and he repented somewhat of his vainglorious and bloodthirsty boasting
over a fallen foe, as he began to see that there was a purpose more noble
in life than ranging land and sea, a ruffian among ruffians, seeking for
glory amid blood and flame. The idea of chivalry, of succoring the weak
and the opprest, of keeping faith and honor not merely towards men who
could avenge themselves, but towards women who could not; the dim dawn of
purity, gentleness, and the conquest of his own fierce passions,--all
these had taken root in his heart during his adventure with the fair
Cornish girl. The seed was sown. Would it he cut down again by the bitter
blasts of the rough fighting world, or would it grow and bear the noble
fruit of "gentle very perfect knighthood"?

They reached the ship, clambered on hoard without ceremony, at the risk of
being taken and killed as robbers, and told their case. The merchants had
not completed their cargo of tin. Hereward offered to make up their loss
to them if they would set sail at once; and they, feeling that the place
would be for some time to come too hot to hold them, and being also in
high delight, like honest Ostmen, with Hereward's prowess, agreed to sail
straight for Waterford, and complete their cargo there. But the tide was
out. It was three full hours before the ship could float; and for three
full hours they waited in fear and trembling, expecting the Cornishmen to
be down upon them in a body every moment, under which wholesome fear some
on board prayed fervently who had never been known to pray before.




CHAPTER IV.

HOW HEREWARD TOOK SERVICE WITH RANALD, KING OF WATERFORD.


The coasts of Ireland were in a state of comparative peace in the middle
of the eleventh century. The ships of Loghlin, seen far out at sea, no
longer drove the population shrieking inland. Heathen Danes, whether
fair-haired Fiongall from Norway, or brown-haired Dubgall from Denmark
proper, no longer burned convents, tortured monks for their gold, or (as
at Clonmacnoise) set a heathen princess, Oda, wife of Thorgill, son of
Harold Harfager, aloft on the high altar to receive the homage of the
conquered. The Scandinavian invaders had become Christianized, and
civilized also,--owing to their continual intercourse with foreign
nations,--more highly than the Irish whom they had overcome. That was
easy; for early Irish civilization seems to have existed only in the
convents and for the religious; and when they were crushed, mere barbarism
was left behind. And now the same process went on in the east of Ireland,
which went on a generation or two later in the east of Scotland. The Danes
began to settle down into peaceful colonists and traders. Ireland was
poor; and the convents plundered once could not be plundered again. The
Irish were desperately brave. Ill-armed and almost naked, they were as
perfect in the arts of forest warfare as those modern Maories whom they so
much resembled; and though their black skenes and light darts were no
match for the Danish swords and battle-axes which they adopted during the
middle age, or their plaid trousers and felt capes for the Danish helmet
and chain corslet, still an Irishman was so ugly a foe, that it was not
worth while to fight with him unless he could be robbed afterwards. The
Danes, who, like their descendants of Northumbria, the Lowlands, and
Ulster, were canny common-sense folk, with a shrewd eye to interest,
found, somewhat to their regret, that there were trades even more
profitable than robbery and murder. They therefore concentrated themselves
round harbors and river mouths, and sent forth their ships to all the
western seas, from Dublin, Waterford, Wexford, Cork, or Limerick. Every
important seaport in Ireland owes its existence to those sturdy Vikings'
sons. In each of these towns they had founded a petty kingdom, which
endured until, and even in some cases after, the conquest of Ireland by
Henry II. and Strongbow. They intermarried in the mean while with the
native Irish. Brian Boru, for instance, was so connected with Danish
royalty, that it is still a question whether he himself had not Danish
blood in his veins. King Sigtryg Silkbeard, who fought against him at
Clontarf, was actually his step-son,--and so too, according to another
Irish chronicler, was King Olaff Kvaran, who even at the time of the
battle of Clontarf was married to Brian Boru's daughter,--a marriage which
(if a fact) was startlingly within the prohibited degrees of
consanguinity. But the ancient Irish were sadly careless on such points;
and as Giraldus Cambrensis says, "followed the example of men of old in
their vices more willingly than in their virtues."

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