Hereward understood his meaning, though not his words.
“Tell him,” he said to Martin, “that fight I must, and tell him that shrive me he must, and that quickly. Tell him how the fellow met me in the wood below just now, and would have slain me there, unarmed as I was; and how, when I told him it was a shame to strike a naked man, he told me he would give me but one hour’s grace to go back, on the faith of a gentleman, for my armor and weapons, and meet him there again, to die by his hand. So shrive me quick, Sir Priest.”
Hereward knelt down. Martin Lightfoot knelt down by him, and with a trembling voice began to interpret for him.
“What does he say?” asked Hereward, as the priest murmured something to himself.
“He said,” quoth Martin, now fairly blubbering, “that, fair and young as you are, your shrift should be as short and as clean as David’s.”
Hereward was touched. “Anything but that,” said he, smiting on his breast, “Mea culpa,—mea culpa,—mea maxima culpa.”
“Tell him how I robbed my father.”
The priest groaned as Martin did so.
“And how I mocked at my mother, and left her in a rage, without ever a kind word between us. And how I have slain I know not how many men in battle, though that, I trust, need not lay heavily on my soul, seeing that I killed them all in fair fight.”
Again the priest groaned.