Then he shook up mare Swallow, and rode for his life, with knights and squires (for the hue and cry was raised) galloping at her heels.
Who then were astonished but those knights, as they saw the ugly potter’s garron gaining on them length after length, till she and her rider had left them far behind?
Who then was proud but Hereward, as the mare tucked her great thighs under her, and swept on over heath and rabbit burrow, over rush and fen, sound ground and rotten all alike to that enormous stride, to that keen bright eye which foresaw every footfall, to that raking shoulder which picked her up again at every stagger?
Hereward laid the bridle on her neck, and let her go. Fall she could not, and tire she could not; and he half wished she might go on forever. Where could a man be better than on a good horse, with all the cares of this life blown away out of his brains by the keen air which rushed around his temples? And he galloped on, as cheery as a boy, shouting at the rabbits as they scuttled from under his feet, and laughing at the dottrel as they postured and anticked on the mole-hills.
But think he must, at last, of how to get home. For to go through Mildenhall again would not be safe, and he turned over the moors to Icklingham; and where he went after, no man can tell.
Certainly not the chronicler; for he tells how Hereward got back by the Isle of Somersham. Which is all but impossible, for Somersham is in Huntingdonshire, many a mile on the opposite side of Ely Isle.
And of all those knights that followed him, none ever saw or heard sign of him save one; and his horse came to a standstill in “the aforesaid wood,” which the chronicler says was Somersham; and he rolled off his horse, and lay breathless under a tree, looking up at his horse’s heaving flanks and wagging tail, and wondering how he should get out of that place before the English found him and made an end of him.
Then there came up to him a ragged churl, and asked him who he was, and offered to help him.
“For the sake of God and courtesy,” quoth he,—his Norman pride being wellnigh beat out of him,—“if thou hast seen or heard anything of Hereward, good fellow, tell me, and I will repay thee well.”
“As thou hast asked me for the sake of God and of courtesy, Sir Knight, I will tell thee. I am Hereward. And in token thereof, thou shalt give me up thy lance and sword, and take instead this sword which I carried off from the king’s court; and promise me, on the faith of a knight, to bear it back to King William; and tell him that Hereward and he have met at last, and that he had best beware of the day when they shall meet again.”