“Is that written in your stars?”
“It is, I fear. And if he have the Pope’s blessing, and the Pope’s banner—Dare we resist the Holy Father?”
“Holy step-father, you mean; for a step-father he seems to prove to merry England. But do you really believe that an old man down in Italy can make a bit of rag conquer by saying a few prayers at it? If I am to believe in a magic flag, give me Harold Hardraade’s Landcyda, at least, with Harold and his Norsemen behind it.”
“William’s French are as good as those Norsemen, man for man; and horsed withal, Hereward.”
“That may be,” said he, half testily, with a curse on the tanner’s grandson and his French popinjays, “and our Englishmen are as good as any two Norsemen, as the Norse themselves say.” He could not divine, and Torfrida hardly liked to explain to him the glamour which the Duke of Normandy had cast over her, as the representative of chivalry, learning, civilization, a new and nobler life for men than the world had yet seen; one which seemed to connect the young races of Europe with the wisdom of the ancients and the magic glories of old Imperial Rome.
“You are not fair to that man,” said she, after a while. “Hereward, Hereward, have I not told you how, though body be strong, mind is stronger? That is what that man knows; and therefore he has prospered. Therefore his realms are full of wise scholars, and thriving schools, and fair minsters, and his men are sober, and wise, and learned like clerks—”
“And false like clerks, as he is himself. Schoolcraft and honesty never went yet together, Torfrida—”
“Not in me?”
“You are not a clerk, you are a woman, and more, you are an elf, a goddess; there is none like you. But hearken to me. This man is false. All the world knows it.”
“He promises, they say, to govern England justly as King Edward’s heir, according to the old laws and liberties of the realm.”