“He speaks well,” said Herluin. “Abbot, grant him his boon.”
“Who celebrates high mass to-morrow?”
“Wilton the priest, the monk of Ely,” said Herluin, aloud. “And a very dangerous and stubborn Englishman,” added he to himself.
“Good. Then this night you shall watch in the church. To-morrow, after the Gospel, the thing shall be done as you will.”
That night two messengers, knights of the Abbot, galloped from Peterborough. One to Ivo Taillebois at Spalding, to tell him that Hereward was at Peterborough, and that he must try to cut him off upon the Egelric’s road, the causeway which one of the many Abbots Egelric had made some thirty years before, through Deeping Fen to Spalding, at an enormous expense of labor and of timber. The other knight rode south, along the Roman road to London, to tell King William of the rising of Kesteven, and all the evil deeds of Hereward and of Brand.
And old Brand slept quietly in his bed, little thinking on what errands his prior had sent his knights.
Hereward and his comrades watched that night in St. Peter’s church. Oppressed with weariness of body, and awe of mind, they heard the monks drone out their chants through the misty gloom; they confessed the sins—and they were many—of their past wild lives. They had to summon up within themselves courage and strength henceforth to live, not for themselves, but for the fatherland which they hoped to save. They prayed to all the heavenly powers of that Pantheon which then stood between man and God, to help them in the coming struggle; but ere the morning dawned, they were nodding, unused to any long strain of mind.
Suddenly Hereward started, and sprang up, with a cry of fire.
“What? Where?” cried his comrades, and the monks who ran up.
“The minster is full of flame. No use! too late! you cannot put it out! It must burn.”