The next day Sir Robert came again early, and found him sitting in the same place.
“He was very well,” he said. “How could he be otherwise? He was just where he ought to be. A man could not be better than in his right place.”
Whereon Sir Robert gave him up for mad.
Then he bethought of sending him a harp, knowing the fame of Hereward’s music and singing. “And when he saw the harp,” the jailer said, “he wept; but bade take the thing away. And so sat still where he was.”
In this state of dull despair he remained for many weeks. At last he woke up.
There passed through and by Bedford large bodies of troops, going as it were to and from battle. The clank of arms stirred Hereward’s heart as of old, and he sent to Sir Robert to ask what was toward.
Sir Robert, “the venerable man,” came to him joyfully and at once, glad to speak to an illustrious captive, whom he looked on as an injured man; and told him news enough.
Taillebois’s warning about Ralph Guader and Waltheof had not been needless. Ralph, as the most influential of the Bretons, was on no good terms with the Normans, save with one, and that one of the most powerful,—Fitz-Osbern, Earl of Hereford. His sister Ralph was to have married; but William, for reasons unknown, forbade the match. The two great earls celebrated the wedding in spite of William, and asked Waltheof as a guest. And at Exning, between the fen and Newmarket Heath,—
“Was that bride-ale
Which was man’s bale.”
For there was matured the plot which Ivo and others had long seen brewing. William had made himself hateful to all men by his cruelties and tyrannies; and indeed his government was growing more unrighteous day by day. Let them drive him out of England, and part the land between them. Two should be dukes, the third king paramount.