“And if I catch them,” quoth William, “I will make an abbot of every one of them.”
“Sire?” quoth the chaplain, in a deprecating tone.
CHAPTER XXX. — HOW HEREWARD PLAYED THE POTTER; AND HOW HE CHEATED THE KING.
They of Ely were now much straitened, being shut in both by land and water; and what was to be done, either by themselves or by the king, they knew not. Would William simply starve them; or at least inflict on them so perpetual a Lent,—for of fish there could be no lack, even if they ate or drove away all the fowl,—as would tame down their proud spirits; which a diet of fish and vegetables, from some ludicrous theory of monastic physicians, was supposed to do? [Footnote: The Cornish—the stoutest, tallest, and most prolific race of the South—live on hardly anything else but fish and vegetables.] Or was he gathering vast armies, from they knew not whence, to try, once and for all, another assault on the island,—it might be from several points at once?
They must send out a spy, and find out news from the outer world, if news were to be gotten. But who would go?
So asked the bishop, and the abbot, and the earls, in council in the abbot’s lodging.
Torfrida was among them. She was always among them now. She was their Alruna-wife, their Vala, their wise woman, whose counsels all received as more than human.
“I will go,” said she, rising up like a goddess on Olympus. “I will cut off my hair, and put on boy’s clothes, and smirch myself brown with walnut leaves; and I will go. I can talk their French tongue. I know their French ways; and as for a story to cover my journey and my doings, trust a woman’s wit to invent that.”