Then Hereward sheathed his sword, and leaping from the bow, came up to the boy.
“Put your hands between his, fair sir,” said the Châtelain.
“That is not the manner of Vikings.”
And he took the boy’s right hand, and grasped it in the plain English fashion.
“There is the hand of an honest man. Come down, men, and take this young lord’s hand, and serve him in the wars as I will do.”
One, by one the men came down; and each took Arnulf’s hand, and shook it till the lad’s face grew red. But none of them bowed, or made obeisance. They looked the boy full in the face, and as they stepped back, stared round upon the ring of armed men with a smile and something of a swagger.
“These are they who bow to no man, and call no man master,” whispered the Abbot.
And so they were: and so are their descendants of Scotland and Northumbria, unto this very day.
The boy sprang from his horse, and walked among them and round them in delight. He admired and handled their long-handled double axes; their short sea-bows of horn and deer-sinew; their red Danish jerkins; their blue sea-cloaks, fastened on the shoulder with rich brooches; and the gold and silver bracelets on their wrists. He wondered at their long shaggy beards, and still more at the blue patterns with which the English among them, Hereward especially, were tattooed on throat and arm and knee.
“Yes, you are Vikings,—just such as my Uncle Robert tells me of.”