“Little fool! And what are you going through, but what I went through before you?”
“You to say that?” gnashed the girl, as another spark of her mother’s came out. “And you gaining what—”
“What I waited for for fifteen years,” said Alftruda, coolly. “If you have courage and cunning, like me, to wait for fifteen years, you too may have your will likewise.”
The pure child shuddered, and was married to Hugh of Evermue, who is not said to have kicked her; and was, according to them of Crowland, a good friend to their monastery, and therefore, doubtless, a good man. Once, says wicked report, he offered to strike her, as was the fashion in those chivalrous days. Whereon she turned upon him like a tigress, and bidding him remember that she was the daughter of Hereward and Torfrida, gave him such a beating that he, not wishing to draw sword upon her, surrendered at discretion; and they lived all their lives afterwards as happily as most other married people in those times.
CHAPTER XL. — HOW HEREWARD BEGAN TO GET HIS SOUL’S PRICE.
And now behold Hereward at home again, fat with the wages of sin, and not knowing that they are death.
He is once more “Dominus de Brunune cum Marisco,” (Lord of Bourne with the fen), “with all returns and liberties and all other things adjacent to the same vill which are now held as a barony from the Lord King of England.” He has a fair young wife, and with her farms and manors, even richer than his own. He is still young, hearty, wise by experience, high in the king’s favor, and deservedly so.
Why should he not begin life again?