“For ever, mother.”
“You will not leave me?”
“If I do, I come back, to finish what I have begun.”
“More blood? O God! Hereward, not that! Let us return good for evil. Let us take up our crosses. Let us humble ourselves under God’s hand, and flee into some convent, and there die praying for our country and our kin.”
“Men must work, while women pray. I will take you to a minster,—to Peterborough.”
“No, not to Peterborough!”
“But my Uncle Brand is abbot there, they tell me, now this four years; and that rogue Herluin, prior in his place.”
“He is dying,—dying of a broken heart, like me. And the Frenchman has given his abbey to one Thorold, the tyrant of Malmesbury,—a Frenchman like himself. No, take me where I shall never see a French face. Take me to Crowland—and him with me—where I shall see naught but English faces, and hear English chants, and die a free Englishwoman under St. Guthlac’s wings.”
“Ah!” said Hereward, bitterly, “St. Guthlac is a right Englishman, and will have some sort of fellow-feeling for us; while St. Peter, of course, is somewhat too fond of Rome and those Italian monks. Well,—blood is thicker than water; so I hardly blame the blessed Apostle.”
“Do not talk so, Hereward.”