CHAPTER XXIV. — HOW ARCHBISHOP ALDRED DIED OF SORROW.
In the tragedies of the next few months Hereward took no part; but they must be looked at near, in order to understand somewhat of the men who were afterwards mixed up with him for weal or woe.
When William went back to the South, the confederates, Child Edgar the Atheling, Gospatrick, and their friends, had come south again from Durham. It was undignified; a confession of weakness. If a Norman had likened them to mice coming out when the cat went away, none could blame him. But so they did; and Osbiorn and his Danes, landing in Humber-mouth, “were met” (says the Anglo-Saxon chronicle) “by Child Edgar and Earl Waltheof and Marlesweyn, and Earl Gospatrick with the men of Northumberland, riding and marching joyfully with an immense army”; not having the spirit of prophecy, or foreseeing those things which were coming on the earth.
To them repaired Edwin and Morcar, the two young Earls, Arkill and Karl, “the great Thanes,” or at least the four sons of Karl,—for accounts differ,—and what few else of the northern nobility Tosti had left unmurdered.
The men of Northumberland received the Danes with open arms. They would besiege York. They would storm the new Norman Keep. They would proclaim Edgar king at York.
In that Keep sat two men, one of whom knew his own mind, the other did not. One was William Malet, knight, one of the heroes of Hastings, a noble Norman, and châtelain of York Castle. The other was Archbishop Aldred.
Aldred seems to have been a man like too many more,—pious and virtuous and harmless enough, and not without worldly prudence; but his prudence was of that sort which will surely swim with the stream, and “honor the powers that be,” if they be but prosperous enough. For after all, if success be not God, it is like enough to Him in some men’s eyes to do instead. So Archbishop Aldred had crowned Harold Godwinsson, when Harold’s star was in the ascendant. And who but Archbishop Aldred should crown William, when his star had cast Harold’s down from heaven? He would have crowned Satanas himself, had he only proved himself king de facto—as he asserts himself to be de jure—of this wicked world.
So Aldred, who had not only crowned William, but supported his power north of Humber by all means lawful, sat in York Keep, and looked at William Malet, wondering what he would do.
Malet would hold it to the last. As for the new keep, it was surely impregnable. The old walls—the Roman walls on which had floated the flag of Constantine the Great—were surely strong enough to keep out men without battering-rams, balistas, or artillery of any kind. What mattered Osbiorn’s two hundred and forty ships, and their crews of some ten or fifteen thousand men? What mattered the tens of thousands of Northern men, with Gospatrick at their head? Let them rage and rob round the walls. A messenger had galloped in from William in the Forest of Dean, to tell Malet to hold out to the last. He had galloped out again, bearing for answer, that the Normans could hold York for a year.
But the Archbishop’s heart misgave him, as from north and south at once came up the dark masses of two mighty armies, broke up into columns, and surged against every gate of the city at the same time. They had no battering-train to breach the ancient walls; but they had—and none knew it better than Aldred—hundreds of friends inside, who would throw open to them the gates.
One gate he could command from the Castle tower. His face turned pale as he saw a mob of armed townsmen rushing down the street towards it; a furious scuffle with the French guards; and then, through the gateway, the open champaign beyond, and a gleaming wave of axes, helms, and spears, pouring in, and up the street.
“The traitors!” he almost shrieked, as he turned and ran down the ladder to tell Malet below.
Malet was firm, but pale as Aldred.
“We must fight to the last,” said he, as he hurried down, commanding his men to sally at once en masse and clear the city.
The mistake was fatal. The French were entangled in the narrow streets. The houses, shut to them, were opened to the English and Danes; and, overwhelmed from above, as well as in front, the greater part of the Norman garrison perished in the first fight. The remnant were shut up in the Castle. The Danes and English seized the houses round, and shot from the windows at every loophole and embrasure where a Norman showed himself.
“Shoot fire upon the houses!” said Malet.
“You will not burn York? O God! is it come to this?”
“And why not York town, or York minster, or Rome itself, with the Pope inside it, rather than yield to barbarians?”
Archbishop Aldred went into his room, and lay down on his bed. Outside was the roar of the battle; and soon, louder and louder, the roar of flame. This was the end of his time-serving and king-making. And he said many prayers, and beat his breast; and then called to his chaplain for blankets, for he was very cold. “I have slain my own sheep!” he moaned, “slain my own sheep!”
His chaplain hapt him up in bed, and looked out of the window at the fight. There was no lull, neither was there any great advantage on either side. Only from the southward he could see fresh bodies of Danes coming across the plain.
“The carcass is here, and the eagles are gathered together. Fetch me the holy sacrament, Chaplain, and God be merciful to an unfaithful shepherd.”
The chaplain went.
“I have slain my own sheep!” moaned the archbishop. “I have given them up to the wolves,—given my own minster, and all the treasures of the saints; and—and—I am very cold.”
When the chaplain came back with the blessed sacrament, Archbishop Aldred was more than cold; for he was already dead and stiff.
But William Malet would not yield. He and his Normans fought, day after day, with the energy of despair. They asked leave to put forth the body of the archbishop; and young Waltheof, who was a pious man, insisted that leave should be given.
So the archbishop’s coffin was thrust forth of the castle-gate, and the monks from the abbey came and bore it away, and buried it in the Cathedral church.
And then the fight went on, day after day, and more and more houses burned, till York was all aflame. On the eighth day the minster was in a light low over Archbishop Aldred’s new-made grave. All was burnt,—minster, churches, old Roman palaces, and all the glories of Constantine the Great and the mythic past.
The besiegers, hewing and hammering gate after gate, had now won all but the Keep itself. Then Malet’s heart failed him. A wife he had, and children; and for their sake he turned coward and fled by night, with a few men-at-arms, across the burning ruins.
Then into what once was York the confederate Earls and Thanes marched in triumph, and proclaimed Edgar king,—a king of dust and ashes.
And where were Edwin and Morcar the meanwhile? It is not told. Were they struggling against William at Stafford, or helping Edric the Wild and his Welshmen to besiege Chester? Probably they were aiding the insurrection,—if not at these two points, still at some other of their great earldoms of Mercia and Chester. They seemed to triumph for a while: during the autumn of 1069 the greater part of England seemed lost to William. Many Normans packed up their plunder and went back to France; and those whose hearts were too stout to return showed no mercy to the English, even as William showed none. To crush the heart of the people by massacres and mutilations and devastations was the only hope of the invader; and thoroughly he did his work whenever he had a chance.
CHAPTER XXV. — HOW HEREWARD FOUND A WISER MAN IN ENGLAND THAN HIMSELF.
There have been certain men so great, that he who describes them in words, much more pretends to analyze their inmost feelings, must be a very great man himself, or incur the accusation of presumption. And such a great man was William of Normandy,—one of those unfathomable master-personages who must not be rashly dragged on any stage. The genius of a Bulwer, in attempting to draw him, took care, with a wise modesty, not to draw him in too much detail,—to confess always that there was much beneath and behind in William’s character which none, even of his contemporaries, could guess. And still more modest than Bulwer is this chronicler bound to be.
But one may fancy, for once in a way, what William’s thoughts were, when they brought him the evil news of York. For we know what his acts were; and he acted up to his thoughts.
Hunting he was, they say, in the forest of Dean, when first he heard that all England, north of the Watling Street, had broken loose, and that he was king of only half the isle.
Did he—as when, hunting in the forest of Rouen, he got the news of Harold’s coronation—play with his bow, stringing and unstringing it nervously, till he had made up his mighty mind? Then did he go home to his lodge, and there spread on the rough oak board a parchment map of England, which no child would deign to learn from now, but was then good enough to guide armies to victory, because the eyes of a great general looked upon it?
As he pored over the map, by the light of bog-deal torch or rush candle, what would he see upon it?
Three separate blazes of insurrection, from northwest to east, along the Watling Street.
At Chester, Edric, “the wild Thane,” who, according to Domesday-book, had lost vast lands in Shropshire; Algitha, Harold’s widow, and Blethwallon and all his Welsh,—“the white mantles,” swarming along Chester streets, not as usually, to tear and ravage like the wild-cats of their own rocks, but fast friends by blood of Algitha, once their queen on Penmaenmawr. [Footnote: See the admirable description of the tragedy of Penmaenmawr, in Bulwer’s ‘Harold.‘] Edwin, the young Earl, Algitha’s brother, Hereward’s nephew,—he must be with them too, if he were a man.
Eastward, round Stafford, and the centre of Mercia, another blaze of furious English valor. Morcar, Edwin’s brother, must be there, as their Earl, if he too was a man.
Then in the fens and Kesteven. What meant this news, that Hereward of St. Omer was come again, and an army with him? That he was levying war on all Frenchmen, in the name of Sweyn, King of Denmark and of England? He is an outlaw, a desperado, a boastful swash-buckler, thought William, it may be, to himself. He found out, in after years, that he had mistaken his man.
And north, at York, in the rear of those three insurrections lay Gospatrick, Waltheof, and Marlesweyn, with the Northumbrian host. Durham was lost, and Comyn burnt therein. But York, so boasted William Malet, could hold out for a year. He should not need to hold out for so long.
And last, and worst of all, hung on the eastern coast the mighty fleet of Sweyn, who claimed England as his of right. The foe whom he had part feared ever since he set foot on English soil, a collision with whom had been inevitable all along, was come at last; but where would he strike his blow?
William knew, it may be, that the Danes had been defeated at Norwich; he knew, doubt it not (for his spies told him everything), that they had purposed entering the Wash. To prevent a junction between them and Hereward was impossible. He must prevent a junction between them and Edwin and Morcar’s men.
He determined, it seems—for he did it—to cut the English line in two, and marched upon Stafford as its centre.
So it seems; for all records of these campaigns are fragmentary, confused, contradictory. The Normans fought, and had no time to write history. The English, beaten and crushed, died and left no sign. The only chroniclers of the time are monks. And little could Ordericus Vitalis, or Florence of Worcester, or he of Peterborough, faithful as he was, who filled up the sad pages of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,—little could they see or understand of the masterly strategy which was conquering all England for Norman monks, in order that they, following the army like black ravens, might feast themselves upon the prey which others won for them. To them, the death of an abbot, the squabbles of a monastery, the journey of a prelate to Rome, are more important than the manoeuvres which decided the life and freedom of tens of thousands.
So all we know is, that William fell upon Morcar’s men at Stafford, and smote them with a great destruction; rolling the fugitives west and east, toward Edwin, perhaps, at Chester, certainly toward Hereward in the fens.
At Stafford met him the fugitives from York, Malet, his wife, and children, with the dreadful news that the Danes had joined Gospatrick, and that York was lost.
William burst into fiendish fury. He accused the wretched men of treason. He cut off their hands, thrust out their eyes, threw Malet into prison, and stormed on north.
He lay at Pontefract for three weeks. The bridges over the Aire were broken down. But at last he crossed and marched on York.
No man opposed him. The Danes were gone down to the Humber. Gospatrick and Waltheof’s hearts had failed them, and they had retired before the great captain.
Florence, of Worcester, says that William bought Earl Osbiorn off, giving him much money, and leave to forage for his fleet along the coast, and that Osbiorn was outlawed on his return to Denmark.
Doubtless William would have so done if he could. Doubtless the angry and disappointed English raised such accusations against the earl, believing them to be true. But is not the simpler cause of Osbiorn’s conduct to be found in this plain fact? He had sailed from Denmark to put Sweyn, his brother, on the throne. He found, on his arrival, that Gospatrick and Waltheof had seized it in the name of Edgar Atheling. What had he to do more in England, save what he did?—go out into the Humber, and winter safely there, waiting till Sweyn should come with reinforcements in the spring?
Then William had his revenge. He destroyed, in the language of Scripture, “the life of the land.” Far and wide the farms were burnt over their owners’ heads, the growing crops upon the ground; the horses were houghed, the cattle driven off; while of human death and misery there was no end. Yorkshire, and much of the neighboring counties, lay waste, for the next nine years. It did not recover itself fully till several generations after.
The Danes had boasted that they would keep their Yule at York. William kept his Yule there instead. He sent to Winchester for the regalia of the Confessor; and in the midst of the blackened ruins, while the English, for miles around, wandered starving in the snows, feeding on carrion, on rats and mice, and, at last, upon each other’s corpses, he sat in his royal robes, and gave away the lands of Edwin and Morcar to his liegemen. And thus, like the Romans, from whom he derived both his strategy and his civilization, he “made a solitude and called it peace.”
He did not give away Waltheof’s lands; and only part of Gospatrick’s. He wanted Gospatrick; he loved Waltheof, and wanted him likewise.
Therefore, through the desert which he himself had made, he forced his way up to the Tees a second time, over snow-covered moors; and this time St. Cuthbert had sent no fog, being satisfied, presumably, with William’s orthodox attachment to St. Peter and Rome; so the Conqueror treated quietly with Waltheof and Gospatrick, who lay at Durham.
Gospatrick got back his ancestral earldom from Tees to Tyne; and paid down for it much hard money and treasure; bought it, in fact, he said.
Waltheof got back his earldom, and much of Morcar’s. From the fens to the Tees was to be his province. And then, to the astonishment alike of Normans and English, and it may be, of himself, he married Judith, the Conqueror’s niece; and became, once more, William’s loved and trusted friend—or slave.
It seems inexplicable at first sight. Inexplicable, save as an instance of that fascination which the strong sometimes exercise over the weak.
Then William turned southwest. Edwin, wild Edric, the dispossessed Thane of Shropshire, and the wilder Blethwallon and his Welshmen, were still harrying and slaying. They had just attacked Shrewsbury. William would come upon them by a way they thought not of.
So over the backbone of England, by way, probably, of Halifax, or Huddersfield, through pathless moors and bogs, down towards the plains of Lancashire and Cheshire, he pushed over and on. His soldiers from the plains of sunny France could not face the cold, the rain, the bogs, the hideous gorges, the valiant peasants,—still the finest and shrewdest race of men in all England,—who set upon them in wooded glens, or rolled stones on them from the limestone crags. They prayed to be dismissed, to go home.
“Cowards might go back,” said William; “he should go on. If he could not ride, he would walk. Whoever lagged, he would be foremost.” And, cheered by his example, the army at last debouched upon the Cheshire flats.
Then he fell upon Edwin, as he had fallen upon Morcar. He drove the wild Welsh through the pass of Mold, and up into their native hills. He laid all waste with fire and sword for many a mile, as Domesday-book testifies to this day. He strengthened the walls of Chester, and trampled out the last embers of rebellion; he went down south to Salisbury, King of England once again.
Why did he not push on at once against the one rebellion left alight,—that of Hereward and his fenmen?
It may be that he understood him and them. It may be that he meant to treat with Sweyn, as he had done, if the story be true, with Osbiorn. It is more likely that he could do no more; that his army, after so swift and long a campaign, required rest. It may be that the time of service of many of his mercenaries was expired. Be that as it may, he mustered them at Old Sarum,—the Roman British burgh which still stands on the down side, and rewarded them, according to their deserts, from the lands of the conquered English.
How soon Hereward knew all this, or how he passed the winter of 1070-71, we cannot tell. But to him it must have been a winter of bitter perplexity.
It was impossible to get information from Edwin; and news from York was almost as impossible to get, for Gilbert of Ghent stood between him and it.
He felt himself now pent in, all but trapped. Since he had set foot last in England ugly things had risen up, on which he had calculated too little,—namely, Norman castles. A whole ring of them in Norfolk and Suffolk cut him off from the south. A castle at Cambridge closed the south end of the fens; another at Bedford, the western end; while Lincoln Castle to the north, cut him off from York.
His men did not see the difficulty; and wanted him to march towards York, and clear all Lindsay and right up to the Humber.
Gladly would he have done so, when he heard that the Danes were wintering in the Humber.
“But how can we take Lincoln Castle without artillery, or even a battering-ram?”
“Let us march past, it then, and leave it behind.”
“Ah, my sons,” said Hereward, laughing sadly, “do you suppose that the Mamzer spends his time—and Englishmen’s life and labor—in heaping up those great stone mountains, that you and I may walk past them? They are put there just to prevent our walking past, unless we choose to have the garrison sallying out to attack our rear, and cut us off from home, and carry off our women into the bargain, when our backs are turned.”
The English swore, and declared that they had never thought of that.
“No. We drink too much ale this side of the Channel, to think of that,—or of anything beside.”
“But,” said Leofwin Prat, “if we have no artillery, we can make some.”
“Spoken like yourself, good comrade. If we only knew how.”
“I know,” said Torfrida. “I have read of such things in books of the ancients, and I have watched them making continually,—I little knew why, or that I should ever turn engineer.”
“What is there that you do not know?” cried they all at once. And Torfrida actually showed herself a fair practical engineer.
But where was iron to come from? Iron for catapult springs, iron for ram heads, iron for bolts and bars?
“Torfrida,” said Hereward, “you are wise. Can you use the divining-rod?
“Why, my knight?”
“Because there might be iron ore in the wolds; and if you could find it by the rod, we might get it up and smelt it.”
Torfrida said humbly that she would try; and walked with the divining-rod between her pretty fingers for many a mile in wood and wold, wherever the ground looked red and rusty. But she never found any iron.
“We must take the tires off the cart-wheels,” said Leofwin Prat.
“But how will the carts do without? For we shall want them if we march.”
“In Provence, where I was born, the wheels of the carts are made out of one round piece of wood. Could we not cut out wheels like them?” asked Torfrida.
“You are the wise woman, as usual,” said Hereward.
Torfrida burst into a violent flood of tears, no one knew why.
There came over her a vision of the creaking carts, and the little sleek oxen, dove-colored and dove-eyed, with their canvas mantles tied neatly on to keep off heat and flies, lounging on with their light load of vine and olive twigs beneath the blazing southern sun. When should she see the sun once more? She looked up at the brown branches overhead, howling in the December gale, and down at the brown fen below, dying into mist and darkness as the low December sun died down; and it seemed as if her life was dying down with it. There would be no more sun, and no more summers, for her upon this earth.
None certainly for her poor old mother. Her southern blood was chilling more and more beneath the bitter sky of Kesteven. The fall of the leaf had brought with it rheumatism, ague, an many miseries. Cunning old leech-wives treated the French lady with tonics, mugwort, and bogbean, and good wine enow, But, like David of old, she got no heat; and before Yule-tide came, she had prayed herself safely out of this world, and into the world to come. And Torfrida’s heart was the more light when she saw her go.
She was absorbed utterly in Hereward and his plots. She lived for nothing else; and clung to them all the more fiercely, the more desperate they seemed.
So that small band of gallant men labored on, waiting for the Danes, and trying to make artillery and take Lincoln Keep. And all the while—so unequal is fortune when God so wills—throughout the Southern Weald, from Hastings to Hind-head, every copse glared with charcoal-heaps, every glen was burrowed with iron diggings, every hammer-pond stamped and gurgled night and day, smelting and forging English iron, wherewith the Frenchmen might slay Englishmen.
William—though perhaps he knew it not himself—had, in securing Sussex and Surrey, secured the then great iron-field of England, and an unlimited supply of weapons; and to that circumstance, it may be, as much as to any other, the success of his campaigns may be due.
It must have been in one of these December days that a handful of knights came through the Bruneswold, mud and blood bespattered, urging on tired horses, as men desperate and foredone. And the foremost of them all, when he saw Hereward at the gate of Bourne, leaped down, and threw his arms round his neck and burst into bitter weeping.
“Hereward, I know you, though you know me not. I am your nephew, Morcar Algarsson; and all is lost.”
As the winter ran on, other fugitives came in, mostly of rank and family. At last Edwin himself came, young and fair, like Morcar; he who should have been the Conqueror’s son-in-law; for whom his true-love pined, as he pined, in vain. Where were Sweyn and his Danes? Whither should they go till he came?
“To Ely,” answered Hereward.
Whether or not it was his wit which first seized on the military capabilities of Ely is not told. Leofric the deacon, who is likely to know best, says that there were men there already holding theirs out against William, and that they sent for Hereward. But it is not clear from his words whether they were fugitives, or merely bold Abbot Thurstan and his monks.
It is but probable, nevertheless, that Hereward, as the only man among the fugitives who ever showed any ability whatsoever, and who was, also, the only leader (save Morcar) connected with the fen, conceived the famous “Camp of Refuge,” and made it a formidable fact. Be that as it may, Edwin and Morcar went to Ely; and there joined them a Count Tosti (according to Leofric), unknown to history; a Siward Barn, or “the boy,” who had been dispossessed of lands in Lincolnshire; and other valiant and noble gentlemen,—the last wrecks of the English aristocracy. And there they sat in Abbot Thurstan’s hall, and waited for Sweyn and the Danes.
But the worst Job’s messenger who, during that evil winter and spring, came into the fen, was Bishop Egelwin of Durham. He it was, most probably, who brought the news of Yorkshire laid waste with fire and sword. He it was, most certainly, who brought the worse news still, that Gospatrick and Waltheof were gone over to the king. He was at Durham, seemingly, when he saw that; and fled for his life ere evil overtook him: for to yield to William that brave bishop had no mind.
But when Hereward heard that Waltheof was married to the Conqueror’s niece, he smote his hands together, and cursed him, and the mother who bore him to Siward the Stout.
“Could thy father rise from his grave, he would split thy craven head in the very lap of the Frenchwoman.”
“A hard lap will he find it, Hereward,” said Torfrida. “I know her,—wanton, false, and vain. Heaven grant he do not rue the day he ever saw her!”
“Heaven grant he may rue it! Would that her bosom were knives and fish-hooks, like that of the statue in the fairy-tale. See what he has done for us! He is Earl not only of his own lands, but he has taken poor Morcar’s too, and half his earldom. He is Earl of Huntingdon, of Cambridge, they say,—of this ground on which we stand. What right have I here now? How can I call on a single man to arm, as I could in Morcar’s name? I am an outlaw here and a robber; and so is every man with me. And do you think that William did not know that? He saw well enough what he was doing when he set up that great brainless idol as Earl again. He wanted to split up the Danish folk, and he has done it. The Northumbrians will stick to Waltheof. They think him a mighty hero, because he held York-gate alone with his own axe against all the French.”
“Well, that was a gallant deed.”
“Pish! we are all gallant men, we English. It is not courage that we want, it is brains. So the Yorkshire and Lindsay men, and the Nottingham men too, will go with Waltheof. And round here, and all through the fens, every coward, every prudent man even,—every man who likes to be within the law, and feel his head safe on his shoulders,—no blame to him—will draw each from me for fear of this new Earl, and leave us to end as a handful of outlaws. I see it all. As William sees it all. He is wise enough, the Mamzer, and so is his father Belial, to whom he will go home some day. Yes, Torfrida,” he went on after a pause, more gently, but in a tone of exquisite sadness, “you were right, as you always are. I am no match for that man. I see it now.”
“I never said that. Only—”
“Only you told me again and again that he was the wisest man on earth.”
“And yet, for that very reason, I bade you win glory without end, by defying the wisest man on earth.”
“And do you bid me do it still?”
“God knows what I bid,” said Torfrida, bursting into tears. “Let me go pray, for I never needed it more.”
Hereward watched her kneeling, as he sat moody, all but desperate. Then he glided to her side, and said gently,—
“Teach me how to pray, Torfrida. I can say a Pater or an Ave. But that does not comfort a man’s heart, as far as I could ever find. Teach me to pray, as you and my mother do.”
And she put her arms round the wild man’s neck, and tried to teach him, like a little child.
CHAPTER XXVI. — HOW HEREWARD FULFILLED HIS WORDS TO THE PRIOR OF THE GOLDEN BOROUGH.
In the course of that winter died good Abbot Brand. Hereward went over to see him, and found him mumbling to himself texts of Isaiah, and confessing the sins of his people.
“‘Woe to the vineyard that bringeth forth wild grapes. Woe to those that join house to house, and field to field,’—like us, and the Godwinssons, and every man that could, till we ‘stood alone in the land.’ ‘Many houses, great and fair, shall be without inhabitants.’ It is all foretold in Holy Writ, Hereward, my son. ‘Woe to those who rise early to fill themselves with strong drink, and the tabret and harp are in their feasts; but they regard not the works of the Lord.’ ‘Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge.’ Ah, those Frenchmen have knowledge, and too much of it; while we have brains filled with ale instead of justice. ‘Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure’; and all go down into it, one by one. And dost thou think thou shalt escape, Hereward, thou stout-hearted?”
“I neither know nor care; but this I know, that whithersoever I go, I shall go sword in hand.”
“‘They that take the sword shall perish by the sword,’” said Brand, and blessed Hereward, and died.
A week after came news that Thorold of Malmesbury was coming to take the Abbey of Peterborough, and had got as far as Stamford, with a right royal train.
Then Hereward sent Abbot Thorold word, that if he or his Frenchmen put foot into Peterborough, he, Hereward, would burn it over their heads. And that if he rode a mile beyond Stamford town, he should walk back into it barefoot in his shirt.
Whereon Thorold abode at Stamford, and kept up his spirits by singing the songs of Roland,—which some say he himself composed.
A week after that, and the Danes were come.
A mighty fleet, with Sweyn Ulfsson at their head, went up the Ouse toward Ely. Another, with Osbiorn at their head, having joined them off the mouth of the Humber, sailed (it seems) up the Nene. All the chivalry of Denmark and Ireland was come. And with it, all the chivalry and the unchivalry of the Baltic shores. Vikings from Jomsburg and Arkona, Gottlanders from Wisby; and with them savages from Esthonia, Finns from Äland, Letts who still offered in the forests of Rugen, human victims to the four-headed Swantowit; foul hordes in sheep-skins and primeval filth, who might have been scented from Hunstanton Cliff ever since their ships had rounded the Skaw.
Hereward hurried to them with all his men. He was anxious, of course, to prevent their plundering the landsfolk as they went,—and that the savages from the Baltic shore would certainly do, if they could, however reasonable the Danes, Orkneymen, and Irish Ostmen might be.
Food, of course, they must take where they could find it; but outrages were not a necessary, though a too common, adjunct to the process of emptying a farmer’s granaries.
He found the Danes in a dangerous mood, sulky, and disgusted, as they had good right to be. They had gone to the Humber, and found nothing but ruin; the land waste; the French holding both the shores of the Humber; and Osbiorn cowering in Humber-mouth, hardly able to feed his men. They had come to conquer England, and nothing was left for them to conquer, but a few peat-bogs. Then they would have what there was in them. Every one knew that gold grew up in England out of the ground, wherever a monk put his foot. And they would plunder Crowland. Their forefathers had done it, and had fared none the worse. English gold they would have, if they could not get fat English manors.
“No! not Crowland!” said Hereward; “any place but Crowland, endowed and honored by Canute the Great,—Crowland, whose abbot was a Danish nobleman, whose monks were Danes to a man, of their own flesh and blood. Canute’s soul would rise up in Valhalla and curse them, if they took the value of a penny from St. Guthlac. St. Guthlac was their good friend. He would send them bread, meat, ale, all they needed. But woe to the man who set foot upon his ground.”
Hereward sent off messengers to Crowland, warning all to be ready to escape into the fens; and entreating Ulfketyl to empty his storehouses into his barges, and send food to the Danes, ere a day was past. And Ulfketyl worked hard and well, till a string of barges wound its way through the fens, laden with beeves and bread, and ale-barrels in plenty, and with monks too, who welcomed the Danes as their brethren, talked to them in their own tongue, blessed them in St. Guthlac’s name as the saviors of England, and went home again, chanting so sweetly their thanks to Heaven for their safety, that the wild Vikings were awed, and agreed that St. Guthlac’s men were wise folk and open-hearted, and that it was a shame to do them harm.
But plunder they must have.
“And plunder you shall have!” said Hereward, as a sudden thought struck him. “I will show you the way to the Golden Borough,—the richest minster in England; and all the treasures of the Golden Borough shall be yours, if you will treat Englishmen as friends, and spare the people of the fens.”
It was a great crime in the eyes of men of that time. A great crime, taken simply, in Hereward’s own eyes. But necessity knows no law. Something the Danes must have, and ought to have; and St. Peter’s gold was better in their purses than in that of Thorold and his French monks.
So he led them across the fens and side rivers, till they came into the old Nene, which men call Catwater and Muscal now.
As he passed Nomanslandhirne, and the mouth of the Crowland river, he trembled, and trusted that the Danes did not know that they were within three miles of St. Guthlac’s sanctuary. But they went on ignorant, and up the Muscal till they saw St. Peter’s towers on the wooded rise, and behind them the great forest which now is Milton Park.
There were two parties in Peterborough minster: a smaller faction of stout-hearted English, a larger one who favored William and the French customs, with Prior Herluin at their head. Herluin wanted not for foresight, and he knew that evil was coming on him. He knew that the Danes were in the fen. He knew that Hereward was with them. He knew that they had come to Crowland. Hereward could never mean to let them sack it. Peterborough must be their point. And Herluin set his teeth, like a bold man determined to abide the worst, and barred and barricaded every gate and door.
That night a hapless churchwarden, Ywar was his name, might have been seen galloping through Milton and Castor Hanglands, and on by Barnack quarries over Southorpe heath, with saddlebags of huge size stuffed with “gospels, mass-robes, cassocks, and other garments, and such other small things as he could carry away.” And he came before day to Stamford, where Abbot Thorold lay at his ease in his inn with his hommes d’armes asleep in the hall.
And the churchwarden knocked them up, and drew Abbot Thorold’s curtains with a face such as his who
“drew Priam’s curtains in the dead of night,
And would have told him, half his Troy was burned”;
and told Abbot Thorold that the monks of Peterborough had sent him; and that unless he saddled and rode his best that night, with his meinie of men-at-arms, his Golden Borough would be even as Troy town by morning light.
“A moi, hommes d’armes!” shouted Thorold, as he used to shout whenever he wanted to scourge his wretched English monks at Malmesbury into some French fashion.
The men leaped up, and poured in, growling.
“Take me this monk, and kick him into the street for waking me with such news.”
“But, gracious lord, the outlaws will surely burn Peterborough; and folks said that you were a mighty man of war.”
“So I am; but if I were Roland, Oliver, and Turpin rolled into one, how am I to fight Hereward and the Danes with forty men-at-arms? Answer me that, thou dunder-headed English porker. Kick him out.”
And Ywar was kicked into the cold, while Thorold raged up and down his chamber in mantle and slippers, wringing his hands over the treasure of the Golden Borough, snatched from his fingers just as he was closing them upon it.
That night the monks of Peterborough prayed in the minster till the long hours passed into the short. The poor corrodiers, and other servants of the monastery, fled from the town outside into the Milton woods. The monks prayed on inside till an hour after matin. When the first flush of the summer’s dawn began to show in the northeastern sky, they heard mingling with their own chant another chant, which Peterborough had not heard since it was Medehampstead, three hundred years ago,—the terrible Yuch-hey-saa-saa-saa,—the war-song of the Vikings of the north.
Their chant stopped of itself. With blanched faces and trembling knees they fled, regardless of all discipline, up into the minster tower, and from the leads looked out northeastward on the fen.
The first rays of the summer sun were just streaming over the vast sheet of emerald, and glittering upon the winding river; and on a winding line, too, seemingly endless, of scarlet coats and shields, black hulls, gilded poops and vanes and beak-heads, and the flash and foam of innumerable oars.
And nearer and louder came the oar-roll, like thunder working up from the northeast; and mingled with it that grim yet laughing Heysaa, which bespoke in its very note the revelry of slaughter.
The ships had all their sails on deck. But as they came nearer, the monks could see the banners of the two foremost vessels.
The one was the red and white of the terrible Dannebrog. The other, the scarcely less terrible white bear of Hereward.
“He will burn the minster! He has vowed to do it. As a child he vowed, and he must do it. In this very minster the fiend entered into him and possessed him; and to this minster has the fiend brought him back to do his will. Satan, my brethren, having a special spite (as must needs be) against St. Peter, rock and pillar of the Holy Church, chose out and inspired this man, even from his mother’s womb, that he might be the foe and robber of St. Peter, and the hater of all who, like my humility, honor him, and strive to bring this English land into due obedience to that blessed apostle. Bring forth the relics, my brethren. Bring forth, above all things, those filings of St. Peter’s own chains,—the special glory of our monastery, and perhaps its safeguard this day.”
Some such bombast would any monk of those days have talked in like case. And yet, so strange a thing is man, he might have been withal, like Herluin, a shrewd and valiant man.
They brought out all the relics. They brought out the filings themselves, in a box of gold. They held them out over the walls at the ships, and called on all the saints to whom they belonged. But they stopped that line of scarlet, black, and gold as much as their spiritual descendants stop the lava-stream of Vesuvius, when they hold out similar matters at them, with a hope unchanged by the experience of eight hundred years. The Heysaa rose louder and nearer. The Danes were coming. And they came.
And all the while a thousand skylarks rose from off the fen, and chanted their own chant aloft, as if appealing to Heaven against that which man’s greed and man’s rage and man’s superstition had made of this fair earth of God.
The relics had been brought out. But, as they would not work, the only thing to be done was to put them back again and hide them safe, lest they should bow down like Bel and stoop like Nebo, and be carried, like them, into captivity themselves, being worth a very large sum of money in the eyes of the more Christian part of the Danish host.
Then to hide the treasures as well as they could; which (says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) they hid somewhere in the steeple.
The Danes were landing now. The shout which they gave, as they leaped on shore, made the hearts of the poor monks sink low. Would they be murdered, as well as robbed? Perhaps not,—probably not. Hereward would see to that. And some wanted to capitulate.
Herluin would not hear of it. They were safe enough. St. Peter’s relic might not have worked a miracle on the spot; but it must have done something. St. Peter had been appealed to on his honor, and on his honor he must surely take the matter up. At all events, the walls and gates were strong, and the Danes had no artillery. Let them howl and rage round the holy place, till Abbot Thorold and the Frenchmen of the country rose and drove them to their ships.
In that last thought the cunning Norman was not so far wrong. The Danes pushed up through the little town, and to the minster gates: but entrance was impossible; and they prowled round and round like raging wolves about a winter steading; but found no crack of entry.
Prior Herluin grew bold; and coming to the leads of the gateway tower, looked over cautiously, and holding up a certain most sacred emblem,—not to be profaned in these pages,—cursed them in the name of his whole Pantheon.
“Aha, Herluin! Are you there?” asked a short, square man in gay armor. “Have you forgotten the peat-stack outside Bolldyke Gate, and how you bade light it under me thirty years since?”
“Thou art Winter?” and the Prior uttered what would be considered, from any but a churchman’s lips, a blasphemous and bloodthirsty curse; but which was, as their writings sufficiently testify, merely one of the lawful weapons or “arts” of those Christians who were “forbidden to fight,”—the other weapon or art being that of lying.
“Aha! That goes like rain off a duck’s back to one who has been a minster scholar in his time. You! Danes! Ostmen! down! If you shoot at that man I’ll cut your heads off. He is the oldest foe I have in the world, and the only one who ever hit me without my hitting him again; and nobody shall touch him but me. So down bows, I say.”
The Danes—humorous all of them—saw that there was a jest toward, and perhaps some earnest too, and joined in jeering the Prior.
Herluin had ducked his head behind the parapet; not from cowardice, but simply because he had on no mail, and might be shot any moment. But when he heard Winter forbid them to touch him, he lifted up his head, and gave his old pupil as good as he brought.
With his sharp, swift Norman priest’s tongue he sneered, he jeered, he scolded, he argued; and then threatened, suddenly changing his tone, in words of real eloquence. He appealed to the superstitions of his hearers. He threatened them with supernatural vengeance.
Some of them began to slink away frightened. St. Peter was an ill man to have a blood feud with.
Winter stood, laughing and jeering again, for full ten minutes. At last: “I asked, and you have not answered: have you forgotten the peat-stack outside Bolldyke Gate? For if you have, Hereward has not. He has piled it against the gate, and it should be burnt through by this time. Go and see.”
Herluin disappeared with a curse.
“Now, you sea-cocks,” said Winter, springing up, “we’ll to the Bolldyke Gate, and all start fair.”
The Bolldyke Gate was on fire; and more, so were the suburbs. There was no time to save them, as Hereward would gladly have done, for the sake of the poor corrodiers. They must go,—on to the Bolldyke Gate. Who cared to put out flames behind him, with all the treasures of Golden Borough before him? In a few minutes all the town was alight. In a few minutes more, the monastery likewise.
A fire is detestable enough at all times, but most detestable by day. At night it is customary, a work of darkness which lights up the dark, picturesque, magnificent, with a fitness Tartarean and diabolic. But under a glaring sun, amid green fields and blue skies, all its wickedness is revealed without its beauty. You see its works, and little more. The flame is hardly noticed. All that is seen is a canker eating up God’s works, cracking the bones of its prey,—for that horrible cracking is uglier than all stage-scene glares,—cruelly and shamelessly under the very eye of the great, honest, kindly sun.
And that felt Hereward, as he saw Peterborough burn. He could not put his thoughts into words, as men of this day can: so much the better for him, perhaps. But he felt all the more intensely—as did men of his day—the things he could not speak. All he said was aside to Winter,—
“It is a dark job. I wish it had been done in the dark.” And Winter knew what he meant.
Then the men rushed into the Bolldyke Gate, while Hereward and Winter stood and looked with their men, whom they kept close together, waiting their commands. The Danes and their allies cared not for the great glowing heap of peat. They cared not for each other, hardly for themselves. They rushed into the gap; they thrust the glowing heap inward through the gateway with their lances; they thrust each other down into it, and trampled over them to fall themselves, rising scorched and withered, and yet struggling on toward the gold of the Golden Borough. One savage Lett caught another round the waist, and hurled him bodily into the fire, crying in his wild tongue:—
“You will make a good stepping-stone for me.”
“That is not fair,” quoth Hereward, and clove him to the chine.
It was wild work. But the Golden Borough was won.
“We must in now and save the monks,” said Hereward, and dashed over the embers.
He was only just in time. In the midst of the great court were all the monks, huddled together like a flock of sheep, some kneeling, most weeping bitterly, after the fashion of monks.
Only Herluin stood in front of them, at bay, a lofty crucifix in his hand. He had no mind to weep. But with a face of calm and bitter wrath, he preferred words of peace and entreaty. They were what the time needed. Therefore they should be given. To-morrow he would write to Bishop Egelsin, to excommunicate with bell, book, and candle, to the lowest pit of Tartarus, all who had done the deed.
But to-day he spoke them fair. However, his fair speeches profited little, not being understood by a horde of Letts and Finns, who howled and bayed at him, and tried to tear the crucifix from his hands; but feared “the white Christ.”
They were already gaining courage from their own yells; in a moment more blood would have been shed, and then a general massacre must have ensued.
Hereward saw it, and shouting, “After me, Hereward’s men! a bear! a bear!” swung Letts and Finns right and left like corn-sheaves, and stood face to face with Herluin.
An angry Finn smote him on the hind-head full with a stone axe. He staggered, and then looked round and laughed.
“Fool! hast thou not heard that Hereward’s armor was forged by dwarfs in the mountain-bowels? Off, and hunt for gold, or it will be all gone.”
The Finn, who was astonished at getting no more from his blow than a few sparks, and expected instant death in return, took the hint and vanished jabbering, as did his fellows.
“Now, Herluin, the Frenchman!” said Hereward.
“Now, Hereward, the robber of saints!” said Herluin.
It was a fine sight. The soldier and the churchman, the Englishman and the Frenchman, the man of the then world, and the man of the then Church, pitted fairly, face to face.
Hereward tried, for one moment, to stare down Herluin. But those terrible eye-glances, before which Vikings had quailed, turned off harmless from the more terrible glance of the man who believed himself backed by the Maker of the universe, and all the hierarchy of heaven.
A sharp, unlovely face it was: though, like many a great churchman’s face of those days, it was neither thin nor haggard; but rather round, sleek, of a puffy and unwholesome paleness. But there was a thin lip above a broad square jaw, which showed that Herluin was neither fool nor coward.
“A robber and a child of Belial thou hast been from thy cradle; and a robber and a child of Belial thou art now. Dare thy last iniquity, and slay the servants of St. Peter on St. Peter’s altar, with thy worthy comrades, the heathen Saracens [Footnote: The Danes were continually mistaken, by Norman churchmen, for Saracens, and the Saracens considered to be idolaters. A maumee, or idol, means a Mahomet.], and set up Mahound with them in the holy place.”
Hereward laughed so jolly a laugh, that the Prior was taken aback.
“Slay St. Peter’s rats? I kill men, not monks. There shall not a hair of your head be touched. Here! Hereward’s men! march these traitors and their French Prior safe out of the walls, and into Milton Woods, to look after their poor corrodiers, and comfort their souls, after they have ruined their bodies by their treason!”
“Out of this place I stir not. Here I am, and here I will live or die, as St. Peter shall send aid.”
But as he spoke, he was precipitated rudely forward, and hurried almost into Hereward’s arms. The whole body of monks, when they heard Hereward’s words, cared to hear no more, but desperate between fear and joy, rushed forward, bearing away their Prior in the midst.
“So go the rats out of Peterborough, and so is my dream fulfilled. Now for the treasure, and then to Ely.”
But Herluin burst himself clear of the frantic mob of monks, and turned back on Hereward.
“Thou wast dubbed knight in that church!”
“I know it, man; and that church and the relics of the saints in it are safe, therefore. Hereward gives his word.”
“That,—but not that only, if thou art a true knight, as thou holdest, Englishman.”
Hereward growled savagely, and made an ugly step toward Herluin. That was a point which he would not have questioned.
“Then behave as a knight, and save, save,”—as the monks dragged him away,—“save the hospice! There are women,—ladies there!” shouted he, as he was borne off.
They never met again on earth; but both comforted themselves in after years, that two old enemies’ last deed in common had been one of mercy.
Hereward uttered a cry of horror. If the wild Letts, even the Jomsburgers, had got in, all was lost. He rushed to the door. It was not yet burst: but a bench, swung by strong arms, was battering it in fast.
“Winter! Geri! Siwards! To me, Hereward’s men! Stand back, fellows. Here are friends here inside. If you do not, I’ll cut you down.”
But in vain. The door was burst, and in poured the savage mob. Hereward, unable to stop them, headed them, or pretended to do so, with five or six of his own men round him, and went into the hall.
On the rushes lay some half-dozen grooms. They were butchered instantly, simply because they were there. Hereward saw, but could not prevent. He ran as hard as he could to the foot of the wooden stair which led to the upper floor.
“Guard the stair-foot, Winter!” and he ran up.
Two women cowered upon the floor, shrieking and praying with hands clasped over their heads. He saw that the arms of one of them were of the most exquisite whiteness, and judging her to be the lady, bent over her. “Lady! you are safe. I will protect you. I am Hereward.”
She sprang up, and threw herself with a scream into his arms.
“Hereward! Hereward! Save me. I am—”
“Alftruda!” said Hereward.
It was Alftruda; if possible more beautiful than ever.
“I have got you!” she cried. “I am safe now. Take me away,—out of this horrible place! Take me into the woods,—anywhere. Only do not let me be burnt here,—stifled like a rat. Give me air! Give me water!” And she clung to him so madly, that Hereward, as he held her in his arms, and gazed on her extraordinary beauty, forgot Torfrida for the second time.
But there was no time to indulge in evil thoughts, even had any crossed his mind. He caught her in his arms, and commanding the maid to follow, hurried down the stair.
Winter and the Siwards were defending the foot with swinging blades. The savages were howling round like curs about a bull; and when Hereward appeared above with the women, there was a loud yell of rage and envy.
He should not have the women to himself,—they would share the plunder equally,—was shouted in half a dozen barbarous dialects.
“Have you left any valuables in the chamber?” whispered he to Alftruda.
“Yes, jewels,—robes. Let them have all, only save me!”
“Let me pass!” roared Hereward. “There is rich booty in the room above, and you may have it as these ladies’ ransom. Them you do not touch. Back, I say, let me pass!”
And he rushed forward. Winter and the housecarles formed round him and the women, and hurried down the hall, while the savages hurried up the ladder, to quarrel over their spoil.
They were out in the court-yard, and safe for the moment. But whither should he take her?
“To Earl Osbiorn,” said one of the Siwards. But how to find him?
“There is Bishop Christiern!” And the Bishop was caught and stopped.
“This is an evil day’s work, Sir Hereward.”
“Then help to mend it by taking care of these ladies, like a man of God.” And he explained the case.
“You may come safely with me, my poor lambs,” said the Bishop. “I am glad to find something to do fit for a churchman. To me, my housecarles.”
But they were all off plundering.
“We will stand by you and the ladies, and see you safe down to the ships,” said Winter, and so they went off.
Hereward would gladly have gone with them, as Alftruda piteously entreated him. But he heard his name called on every side in angry tones.
“Who wants Hereward?”
“Earl Osbiorn,—here he is.”
“Those scoundrel monks have hidden all the altar furniture. If you wish to save them from being tortured to death, you had best find it.”
Hereward ran with him into the Cathedral. It was a hideous sight; torn books and vestments; broken tabernacle work; foul savages swarming in and out of every dark aisle and cloister, like wolves in search of prey; five or six ruffians aloft upon the rood screen; one tearing the golden crown from the head of the crucifix, another the golden footstool from its feet. [Footnote: The crucifix was probably of the Greek pattern, in which the figure stood upon a flat slab, projecting from the cross.]
As Hereward came up, crucifix and man fell together, crashing upon the pavement, amid shouts of brutal laughter.
He hurried past them, shuddering, into the choir. The altar was bare, the golden pallium which covered it, gone.
“It may be in the crypt below. I suppose the monks keep their relics there,” said Osbiorn.
“No! Not there. Do not touch the relics! Would you have the curse of all the saints? Stay! I know an old hiding-place. It may be there. Up into the steeple with me.”
And in a chamber in the steeple they found the golden pall, and treasures countless and wonderful.
“We had better keep the knowledge of this to ourselves awhile,” said Earl Osbiorn, looking with greedy eyes on a heap of wealth such as he had never beheld before.
“Not we! Hereward is a man of his word, and we will share and share alike.” And he turned and went down the narrow winding stair.
Earl Osbiorn gave one look at his turned back; an evil spirit of covetousness came over him; and he smote Hereward full and strong upon the hind-head.
The sword turned upon the magic helm, and the sparks flashed out bright and wide.
Earl Osbiorn shrunk back, appalled and trembling.
“Aha!” said Hereward without looking round. “I never thought there would be loose stones in the roof. Here! Up here, Vikings, Berserker, and sea-cocks all! Here, Jutlanders, Jomsburgers, Letts, Finns, witches’ sons and devils’ sons all! Here!” cried he, while Osbiorn profited by that moment to thrust an especially brilliant jewel into his boot. “Here is gold, here is the dwarfs work! Come up and take your Polotaswarf! You would not get a richer out of the Kaiser’s treasury. Here, wolves and ravens, eat gold, drink gold, roll in gold, and know that Hereward is a man of his word, and pays his soldiers’ wages royally!”
They rushed up the narrow stair, trampling each other to death, and thrust Hereward and the Earl, choking, into a corner. The room was so full for a few moments, that some died in it. Hereward and Osbiorn, protected by their strong armor, forced their way to the narrow window, and breathed through it, looking out upon the sea of flame below.
“That was an unlucky blow,” said Hereward, “that fell upon my head.”
“Very unlucky. I saw it coming, but had no time to warn you. Why do you hold my wrist?”
“Men’s daggers are apt to get loose at such times as these.”
“What do you mean?” and Earl Osbiorn went from him, and into the now thinning press. Soon only a few remained, to search, by the glare of the flames, for what their fellows might have overlooked.
“Now the play is played out,” said Hereward, “we may as well go down, and to our ships.”
Some drunken ruffians would have burnt the church for mere mischief. But Osbiorn, as well as Hereward, stopped that. And gradually they got the men down to the ships; some drunk, some struggling under plunder; some cursing and quarrelling because nothing had fallen to their lot. It was a hideous scene; but one to which Hereward, as well as Osbiorn, was too well accustomed to see aught in it save an hour’s inevitable trouble in getting the men on board.
The monks had all fled. Only Leofwin the Long was left, and he lay sick in the infirmary. Whether he was burned therein, or saved by Hereward’s men, is not told.
And so was the Golden Borough sacked and burnt. Now then, whither?
The Danes were to go to Ely and join the army there. Hereward would march on to Stamford; secure that town if he could; then to Huntingdon, to secure it likewise; and on to Ely afterwards.
“You will not leave me among these savages?” said Alftruda.
“Heaven forbid! You shall come with me as far as Stamford, and then I will set you on your way.”
“My way?” said Alftruda, in a bitter and hopeless tone.
Hereward mounted her on a good horse, and rode beside her, looking—and he well knew it—a very perfect knight. Soon they began to talk. What had brought Alftruda to Peterborough, of all places on earth?
“A woman’s fortune. Because I am rich,—and some say fair,—I am a puppet, and a slave, a prey. I was going back to my,—to Dolfin.”
“Have you been away from him, then?”
“What! Do you not know?”
“How should I know, lady?”
“Yes, most true. How should Hereward know anything about Alftruda? But I will tell you. Maybe you may not care to hear?”
“About you? Anything. I have often longed to know how,—what you were doing.”
“Is it possible? Is there one human being left on earth who cares to hear about Alftruda? Then listen. You know when Gospatrick fled to Scotland his sons went with him. Young Gospatrick, Waltheof, [Footnote: This Waltheof Gospatricksson must not be confounded with Waltheof Siwardsson, the young Earl. He became a wild border chieftain, then Baron of Atterdale, and then gave Atterdale to his sister Queen Ethelreda, and turned monk, and at last Abbot, of Crowland: crawling home, poor fellow, like many another, to die in peace in the sanctuary of the Danes.] and he,—Dolfin. Ethelreda, his girl, went too,—and she is to marry, they say, Duncan, Malcolm’s eldest son by Ingebiorg. So Gospatrick will find himself, some day, father-in-law of the King of Scots.”
“I will warrant him to find his nest well lined, wherever he be. But of yourself?”
“I refused to go. I could not face again that bleak black North. Beside—but that is no concern of Hereward’s—”
Hereward was on the point of saying, “Can anything concern you, and not be interesting to me?”
But she went on,—
“I refused, and—”
“And he misused you?” asked he, fiercely.
“Better if he had. Better if he had tied me to his stirrup, and scourged me along into Scotland, than have left me to new dangers and to old temptations.”
“What temptations?”
Alftruda did not answer; but went on,—
“He told me, in his lofty Scots’ fashion, that I was free to do what I list. That he had long since seen that I cared not for him; and that he would find many a fairer lady in his own land.”
“There he lied. So you did not care for him? He is a noble knight.”
“What is that to me? Women’s hearts are not to be bought and sold with their bodies, as I was sold. Care for him? I care for no creature upon earth. Once I cared for Hereward, like a silly child. Now I care not even for him.”
Hereward was sorry to hear that. Men are vainer than women, just as peacocks are vainer than peahens; and Hereward was—alas for him!—a specially vain man. Of course, for him to fall in love with Alftruda would have been a shameful sin,—he would not have committed it for all the treasures of Constantinople; but it was a not unpleasant thought that Alftruda should fall in love with him. But he only said, tenderly and courteously,—
“Alas, poor lady!”
“Poor lady. Too true, that last. For whither am I going now? Back to that man once more.”
“To Dolfin?”
“To my master, like a runaway slave. I went down south to Queen Matilda. I knew her well, and she was kind to me, as she is to all things that breathe. But now that Gospatrick is come into the king’s grace again, and has bought the earldom of Northumbria, from Tweed to Tyne—”
“Bought the earldom?”
“That has he; and paid for it right heavily.”
“Traitor and fool! He will not keep it seven years. The Frenchman will pick a quarrel with him, and cheat him out of earldom and money too.”
The which William did, within three years.
“May it be so! But when he came into the king’s grace, he must needs demand me back in his son’s name.”
“What does Dolfin want with you?”
“His father wants my money, and stipulated for it with the king. And besides, I suppose I am a pretty plaything enough still.”
“You? You are divine, perfect. Dolfin is right. How could a man who had once enjoyed you live without you?”
Alftruda laughed,—a laugh full of meaning; but what that meaning was, Hereward could not divine.
“So now,” she said, “what Hereward has to do, as a true and courteous knight, is to give Alftruda safe conduct, and, if he can, a guard; and to deliver her up loyally and knightly to his old friend and fellow-warrior, Dolfin Gospatricksson, earl of whatever he can lay hold of for the current month.”
“Are you in earnest?”
Alftruda laughed one of her strange laughs, looking straight before her. Indeed, she had never looked Hereward in the face during the whole ride.
“What are those open holes? Graves?”
“They are Barnack stone-quarries, which Alfgar my brother gave to Crowland.”
“So? That is pity. I thought they had been graves; and then you might have covered me up in one of them, and left me to sleep in peace.”
“What can I do for you, Alftruda, my old play-fellow: Alftruda, whom I saved from the bear?”
“If she had foreseen the second monster into whose jaws she was to fall, she would have prayed you to hold that terrible hand of yours, which never since, men say, has struck without victory and renown. You won your first honor for my sake. But who am I now, that you should turn out of your glorious path for me?”
“I will do anything,—anything. But why miscall this noble prince a monster?”
“If he were fairer than St. John, more wise than Solomon, and more valiant than King William, he is to me a monster; for I loathe him, and I know not why. But do your duty as a knight, sir. Convey the lawful wife to her lawful spouse.”
“What cares an outlaw for law, in a land where law is dead and gone? I will do what I—what you like. Come with me to Torfrida at Bourne; and let me see the man who dares try to take you out of my hand.”
Alftruda laughed again.
“No, no. I should interrupt the little doves in their nest. Beside, the billing and cooing might make me envious. And I, alas! who carry misery with me round the land, might make your Torfrida jealous.”
Hereward was of the same opinion, and rode silent and thoughtful through the great woods which are now the noble park of Burghley.
“I have found it!” said he at last. “Why not go to Gilbert of Ghent, at Lincoln?”
“Gilbert? Why should he befriend me?”
“He will do that, or anything else, which is for his own profit.”
“Profit? All the world seems determined to make profit out of me. I presume you would, if I had come with you to Bourne.”
“I do not doubt it. This is a very wild sea to swim in; and a man must be forgiven, if he catches at every bit of drift-timber.”
“Selfishness, selfishness everywhere;—and I suppose you expect to gain by sending me to Gilbert of Ghent?”
“I shall gain nothing, Alftruda, save the thought that you are not so far from me—from us—but that we can hear of you,—send succor to you if you need.”
Alftruda was silent. At last—
“And you think that Gilbert would not be afraid of angering the king?”
“He would not anger the king. Gilbert’s friendship is more important to William, at this moment, than that of a dozen Gospatricks. He holds Lincoln town, and with it the key of Waltheof’s earldom: and things may happen, Alftruda—I tell you; but if you tell Gilbert, may Hereward’s curse be on you!”
“Not that! Any man’s curse save yours!” said she in so passionate a voice that a thrill of fire ran through Hereward. And he recollected her scoff at Bruges,—“So he could not wait for me?” And a storm of evil thoughts swept through him. “Would to heaven!” said he to himself, crushing them gallantly down, “I had never thought of Lincoln. But there is no other plan.”
But he did not tell Alftruda, as he meant to do, that she might see him soon in Lincoln Castle as its conqueror and lord. He half hoped that when that day came, Alftruda might be somewhere else.
“Gilbert can say,” he went on, steadying himself again, “that you feared to go north on account of the disturbed state of the country; and that, as you had given yourself up to him of your own accord, he thought it wisest to detain you, as a hostage for Dolfin’s allegiance.”
“He shall say so. I will make him say so.”
“So be it, Now, here we are at Stamford town; and I must to my trade. Do you like to see fighting, Alftruda,—the man’s game, the royal game, the only game worth a thought on earth? For you are like to see a little in the next ten minutes.”
“I should like to see you fight. They tell me none is so swift and terrible in the battle as Hereward. How can you be otherwise, who slew the bear,—when we were two happy children together? But shall I be safe?”
“Safe? of course,” said Hereward, who longed, peacock-like, to show off his prowess before a lady who was—there was no denying it—far more beautiful than even Torfrida.
But he had no opportunity to show off his prowess. For as he galloped in over Stamford Bridge, Abbot Thorold galloped out at the opposite end of the town through Casterton, and up the Roman road to Grantham.
After whom Hereward sent Alftruda (for he heard that Thorold was going to Gilbert at Lincoln) with a guard of knights, bidding them do him no harm, but say that Hereward knew him to be a preux chevalier and lover of fair ladies; that he had sent him a right fair one to bear him company to Lincoln, and hoped that he would sing to her on the way the song of Roland.
And Alftruda, who knew Thorold, went willingly, since it could no better be.
After which, according to Gaimar, Hereward tarried three days at Stamford, laying a heavy tribute on the burgesses for harboring Thorold and his Normans; and also surprised at a drinking-bout a certain special enemy of his, and chased him from room to room sword in hand, till he took refuge shamefully in an outhouse, and begged his life. And when his knights came back from Grantham, he marched to Bourne.
“The next night,” says Leofric the deacon, or rather the monk who paraphrased his saga in Latin prose,—“Hereward saw in his dreams a man standing by him of inestimable beauty, old of years, terrible of countenance, in all the raiment of his body more splendid than all things which he had ever seen, or conceived in his mind; who threatened him with a great club which he carried in his hand, and with a fearful doom, that he should take back to his church all that had been carried off the night before, and have them restored utterly, each in its place, if he wished to provide for the salvation of his soul, and escape on the spot a pitiable death. But when awakened, he was seized with a divine terror, and restored in the same hour all that he took away, and so departed, going onward with all his men.”
So says Leofric, wishing, as may be well believed, to advance the glory of St. Peter, and purge his master’s name from the stain of sacrilege. Beside, the monks of Peterborough, no doubt, had no wish that the world should spy out their nakedness, and become aware that the Golden Borough was stript of all its gold.
Nevertheless, truth will out. Golden Borough was Golden Borough no more. The treasures were never restored; they went to sea with the Danes, and were scattered far and wide,—to Norway, to Ireland, to Denmark; “all the spoils,” says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, “which reached the latter country, being the pallium and some of the shrines and crosses; and many of the other treasures they brought to one of the king’s towns, and laid them up in the church. But one night, through their carelessness and drunkenness, the church was burned, with all that was therein. Thus was the minster of Peterborough burned and pillaged. May Almighty God have pity on it in His great mercy.”
Hereward, when blamed for the deed, said always that he did it “because of his allegiance to the monastery.” Rather than that the treasures gathered by Danish monks should fall into the hands of the French robbers, let them be given to their own Danish kinsmen, in payment for their help to English liberty.
But some of the treasure, at least, he must have surely given back, it so appeased the angry shade of St. Peter. For on that night, when marching past Stamford, they lost their way. “To whom, when they had lost their way, a certain wonder happened, and a miracle, if it can be said that such would be worked in favor of men of blood. For while in the wild night and dark they wandered in the wood, a huge wolf met them, wagging his tail like a tame dog, and went before them on a path. And they, taking the gray beast in the darkness for a white dog, cheered on each other to follow him to his farm, which ought to be hard by. And in the silence of the midnight, that they might see their way, suddenly candles appeared, burning, and clinging to the lances of all the knights,—not very bright, however; but like those which the folk call candelae nympharum,—wills of the wisp. But none could pull them off, or altogether extinguish them, or throw them from their hands. And thus they saw their way, and went on, although astonished out of mind, with the wolf leading them, until day dawned, and they saw, to their great astonishment, that he was a wolf. And as they questioned among themselves about what had befallen, the wolf and the candles disappeared, and they came whither they had been minded,—beyond Stamford town,—thanking God, and wondering at what had happened.”
After which Hereward took Torfrida, and his child, and all he had, and took ship at Bardeney, and went for Ely. Which when Earl Warrenne heard, he laid wait for him, seemingly near Southery: but got nothing thereby, according to Leofric, but the pleasure of giving and taking a great deal of bad language; and (after his men had refused, reasonably enough, to swim the Ouse and attack Hereward) an arrow, which Hereward, “modicum se inclinans,” stooping forward, says Leofric,—who probably saw the deed,—shot at him across the Ouse, as the Earl stood cursing on the top of the dike. Which arrow flew so stout and strong, that though it sprang back from Earl Warrenne’s hauberk, it knocked him almost senseless off his horse, and forced him to defer his purpose of avenging Sir Frederic his brother.
After which Hereward threw himself into Ely, and assumed, by consent of all, the command of the English who were therein.