Edwin, Morcar, and Waltheof trembled before a genius superior to their own,—a genius, indeed, which had not its equal then in Christendom. They came in and begged grace of the king. They got it. But Edwin’s earldom was forfeited, and he and his brother became, from thenceforth, desperate men.
Malcolm of Scotland trembled likewise, and asked for peace. The clans, it is said, rejoiced thereat, having no wish for a war which could buy them neither spoil nor land. Malcolm sent ambassadors to William, and took that oath of fealty to the “Basileus of Britain,” which more than one Scottish king and kinglet had taken before,—with the secret proviso (which, during the Middle Ages, seems to have been thoroughly understood in such cases by both parties), that he should be William’s man just as long as William could compel him to be so, and no longer.
Then came cruel and unjust confiscations. Ednoth the standard-bearer had fallen at Bristol, fighting for William against the Haroldssons, yet all his lands were given away to Normans. Edwin and Morcar’s lands were parted likewise; and—to specify cases which bear especially on the history of Hereward—Oger the Briton got many of Morcar’s manors round Bourne, and Gilbert of Ghent many belonging to Marlesweyn about Lincoln city. And so did that valiant and crafty knight find his legs once more on other men’s ground, and reappears in monkish story as “the most devout and pious earl, Gilbert of Ghent.”
What followed, Hereward heard not from flying rumors; but from one who had seen and known and judged of all. [Footnote: For Gyda’s coming to St. Omer that year, see Ordericus Vitalis.]
For one day, about this time, Hereward was riding out of the gate of St. Omer, when the porter appealed to him. Begging for admittance were some twenty women, and a clerk or two; and they must needs see the châtelain. The châtelain was away. What should he do?
Hereward looked at the party, and saw, to his surprise, that they were Englishwomen, and two of them women of rank, to judge from the rich materials of their travel-stained and tattered garments. The ladies rode on sorry country garrons, plainly hired from the peasants who drove them. The rest of the women had walked; and weary and footsore enough they were.
“You are surely Englishwomen?” asked he of the foremost, as he lifted his cap.
The lady bowed assent, beneath a heavy veil.
“Then you are my guests. Let them pass in.” And Hereward threw himself off his horse, and took the lady’s bridle.
“Stay,” she said, with an accent half Wessex, half Danish. “I seek the Countess Judith, if it will please you to tell me where she lives.”