Ivo dragged William on, regardless of curses and prayers from his soldiery; and they reached the shore just in time to see between them and the water a long black smouldering writhing line; the morass to right and left, which had been a minute before deep reed, an open smutty pool, dotted with boatsful of shrieking and cursing men; and at the causeway-end the tower, with the flame climbing up its posts, and the witch of Brandon throwing herself desperately from the top, and falling dead upon the embers, a motionless heap of rags.
“Fool that you are! Fool that I was!” cried the great king, as he rolled off his horse at his tent door, cursing with rage and pain.
Ivo Taillebois sneaked off, sent over to Mildenhall for the second witch, and hanged her, as some small comfort to his soul. Neither did he forget to search the cabin till he found buried in a crock the bits of his own gold chain and various other treasures, for which the wretched old women had bartered their souls. All which he confiscated to his own use, as a much injured man.
The next day William withdrew his army. The men refused to face again that blood-stained pass. The English spells, they said, were stronger than theirs, or than the daring of brave men. Let William take Torfrida and burn her, as she had burned them, with reeds out of Willingham fen; then might they try to storm Ely again.
Torfrida saw them turn, flee, die in agony. Her work was done; her passion exhausted; her self-torture, and the mere weight of her fetters, which she had sustained during her passion, weighed her down; she dropped senseless on the turf, and lay in a trance for many hours.
Then she arose, and casting off her fetters and her sackcloth, was herself again: but a sadder woman till her dying day.
CHAPTER XXXII. — HOW KING WILLIAM TOOK COUNSEL OF A CHURCHMAN.
If Torfrida was exhausted, so was Hereward likewise. He knew well that a repulse was not a defeat. He knew well the indomitable persistence, the boundless resources, of the mastermind whom he defied; and he knew well that another attempt would be made, and then another, till—though it took seven years in the doing—Ely would be won at last. To hold out doggedly as long as he could was his plan: to obtain the best terms he could for his comrades. And he might obtain good terms at last. William might be glad to pay a fair price in order to escape such a thorn in his side as the camp of refuge, and might deal—or, at least, promise to deal—mercifully and generously with the last remnant of the English gentry. For himself yield he would not: when all was over, he would flee to the sea, with Torfrida and his own housecarles, and turn Viking; or go to Sweyn Ulfsson in Denmark, and die a free man.