Matilda the good looked at her with a face of such calm, childlike astonishment, that Alftruda dropped her “fairy neck” at last, and slunk out of the presence like a beaten cur.
William went to the wedding; and swore horrible oaths that they were the handsomest pair he had ever seen. And so Hereward married Alftruda. How Holy Church settled the matter is not said. But that Hereward married Alftruda, under these very circumstances, may be considered a “historic fact,” being vouched for by Gaimar, and by the Peterborough Chronicler. And doubtless Holy Church contrived that it should happen without sin, if it conduced to her own interest.
And little Torfrida—then, it seems, some sixteen years of age—was married to Hugh of Evermue. She wept and struggled as she was dragged into the church.
“But I do not want to be married. I want to go back to my mother.”
“The diabolic instinct may have descended to her,” said the priests, “and attracts her to the sorceress. We had best sprinkle her with holy water.”
So they sprinkled her with holy water, and used exorcisms. Indeed, the case being an important one, the personages of rank, they brought out from their treasures the apron of a certain virgin saint, and put it round her neck, in hopes of driving out the hereditary fiend.
“If I am led with a halter, I must needs go,” said she, with one of her mother’s own flashes of wit, and went. “But Lady Alftruda,” whispered she, half-way up the church, “I never loved him.”
“Behave yourself before the King, or I will whip you till the blood runs.”
And so she would, and no one would have wondered in those days.
“I will murder you if you do. But I never even saw him.”