But there was now in the hall a merrier eye, and one more roguish withal, than ever shone under the brows of a Norman. The drawbridge being down, and the gate of the house wide open, that all who list might enter and partake according to his degree of some of the good things that were provided, a young Saxon glee-man or menestrel came over the bridge unchallenged, and only paused under the low archway of the gate. His dress was tattered and torn, and not free from the mud and slime of the fens, but sweet and clear was his voice, and merry and right old English his song; and so all the Saxons that heard him gave him welcome, and bade him enter the hall and sing a lay in honour of the Ladie Lucia and of her first-born son, who would be good lord to all Saxon folk as his grandfather had been before him. But before going into the hall, where the feast was just over, and all the tables cleared, the glee-man went aside into the buttery to renew his strength with a good meal, and refresh his voice with a cup of good wine. When he entered the hall the old Saxon seneschal cried, “A glee-man! another glee-man come to sing an English song!” The Norman menestrels looked scornfully at him and his tattered cloak; and the Saxon menestrels asked of one another who he might be; for none of them knew him, albeit the menestrels, like the beggars and other happy vagabonds of old England, were united in league and brotherhood, in sort that every menestrel of East Anglia was thought to know every other menestrel or glee-man of that countrie. But when the new and unknown comer had played his preludium on his Saxon lyre of four strings, and had sung his downright Saxon song with a voice that was clear as a bell, and at times loud as a trumpet, the English part of the company, from the highest degree to the lowest, shouted and clapped their hands; and all the English menestrels vowed that he was worthy of their guild; while even the Norman glee-men confessed that, although the words were barbarous and not to be understood by civil men, the air was good, and the voice of the best. Whether the words were ancient as the music, or whether they were made in part or wholly for the occasion by the singer, they went deep into the hearts both of the Ladie Alftrude and the Ladie Lucia; and while the young matron of the house put a little ring into a cup, and bade her little Saxon page fill the cup with the best wine, and hand it to the Saxon menestrel, the maiden Alftrude went straight to the spot where that menestrel was standing, and asked him to sing his song again. And when the glee-man had knelt on his knee to the mistress of the house, and had drained her cup of wine until not so much as the ghost of a drop was left in it, and when he had sung his song over again, and more deftly and joyously than he had sung it before, the Lady Alftrude still kept near him, and, discoursing with him, took three or more turns across the lower part of the hall. Saxon lords and Saxon dames and maidens of high degree were ever courteous to the poor and lowly, and ever honoured those who had skill in minstrelsy. At first the Ladie Alftrude smiled and laughed as if at some witty conceit let fall by the menestrel; but then those who watched her well, and were near enough to see, saw a cloud on her brow and a blush on her cheek, and then a paleness, and a short gasping as if for breath. But all this passed away, and the maiden continued to discourse calmly with the menestrel, and whenever the menestrel raised his voice it was only to give utterance to some pleasant gibe.
Ivo Taille-Bois, albeit he had seen him often under another hood, might not know him, and all the English glee-men might continue to wonder who he was; but we know full well that the menestrel was none other than Elfric the novice. He had found his way unscathed to Ey, and not finding the Ladie Alftrude there, he had followed her to the manor-house of her fair cousin, well pleased that such a celebration and feast would make easy his entrance into the house. A maiden of Alftrude’s degree could not travel and visit without a featy handmaiden attendant upon her. Rough men that bend bows and wield swords and spears, and make themselves horny fists, are not fit to dress a ladie’s hair or tie her sandals; and well we ween it becometh not priests with shaven crowns to be lacing a maiden’s bodice; and so, besides the armed men and the two churchmen, the Ladie Alftrude had brought with her Mildred of Hadenham, that maiden well-behaved and well-favoured and pious withal, whom Elfric was wont to entertain with talk about my Lord Hereward, as well as of other matters. Now Mildred of Hadenham was there at the lower end of the hall, seated among other handmaidens; and as soon as Elfric entered, or, at the latest, as soon as he finished the first verse of his song, she knew who the menestrel was as well as we do. While the Ladie Alftrude was before their eyes, few of the noble company cared to look that way or upon any other than her; but if a sharp eye had watched it would have seen that Mildred several times blushed a much deeper red than her mistress, and that the young glee-man’s eyes were rather frequently seeking her out. And at last, when the Ladie Alftrude returned to her cousin at the head of the hall, and the floor of the hall was cleared for an exhibition of dancers, the glee-man, after some gyrations, found his way to the side of Mildred of Hadenham, and kept whispering to her, and making her blush even redder than before, all the other handmaidens wondering the while, and much envying Mildred, for, albeit his cloak was tattered and his hose soiled, the young menestrel, besides having the sweetest voice, was surpassingly well-favoured in form and face, and had the happiest-looking eye that ever was seen.
The Ladie Alftrude talked long in a corner with her cousin the Ladie Lucia, and then there was a calling and consulting with Mildred of Hadenham, as though her mistress’s head-gear needed some rearrangement. And after this the two cousins and the waiting-woman quitted the hall, and went into an upper and inner chamber, and tarried there for a short while, or for about the time it takes to say a score of Aves. Then they come back to the hall, and the Ladie Lucia and the Ladie Alftrude sit down together where the company is most thronged. But where is the curiously delicate little ring that was glittering on Ladie Alftrude’s finger?... Ha! Ha! we wot well that Elfric hath got it, and other love-tokens besides, that he may carry them beyond seas, and bring back Hereward to his ladie-love and to England that cannot do without him. But where is that merriest of glee-men?... Many in the hall were asking the question, for they wanted to hear him again. But Elfric was gone, and none seemed to know how or when he went. Mayhap, maid Mildred knew something about it, for when the English part of the company began to call for the glee-man with the tattered cloak, that he might sing another merry song, she turned her face to the wall and wept.
Well, I ween, had our simple dull Saxons outwitted the nimble-witted Normans! Well had the menestrel and the ladies and the waiting-maid played their several parts! Could Ivo Taille-Bois but have known his errand, or have guessed at the mischief that he was brewing for him, either Elfric would never have entered those walls, or he would never have left them alive.
CHAPTER VII.
HEREWARD’S RETURN.
There may be between Thamesis and the Tyne worse seas and more perilous rocks; but when the north-east wind blows right into that gulf, and the waves of the German Ocean are driven on by the storms of winter, the practised mariner will tell ye that the navigation of the Wash, the Boston Deeps, and the Lynn Deeps, is a fearful thing to those who know the shoals and coasts, and a leap into the jaws of death to those that know them not. Besides the shallows near shore, there be sandbanks and treacherous shoals in the middle of the bay, and these were ofttimes shifting their places or changing their shapes. Moreover, so many rivers and broad streams and inundations, that looked like regular rivers in the wet seasons of the year, poured their waters into the Wash, that it required all the skill of the mariner and pilot to find a way into the proper bed of any one particular river, as the Ouse, the Nene, or the Welland.[[109]] Here are many quick-sands, fatal to barks, when concealed under the water; and even in summer-tide, when the waters are dried, the shepherds and their flocks,[[110]] are often taught by a woeful experience that these quick-sands have a wonderful force in sucking in and holding fast whatsoever cometh upon them. In this sort the perils of shipmen are not over even when they reach the shore, and are advancing to tread upon what seemeth like terra firma. The Wash and its sand-banks and the quick-sands had made more East-Anglian widows and orphans than were made by any other calamity besides, save always the fierce Norman conquest.
It was under one of the fiercest and loudest tempests that ever blew from the sky of winter, and upon one of the roughest seas that ever rolled into the Wash, that five barks, which seemed all to be deeply laden and crowded with men, drove past the shoal called the Dreadful,[[111]] and made for that other shoal called the Inner Dousing. The sun, which had not been visible the whole day, now showed itself like a ball of fire as it sank in the west behind the flats and fens of Lincolnshire; and when the sun was down the fury of the tempest seemed to increase. When they had neared the Inner Dousing, four of the barks took in all their sail and lay-to as best they could in the trough of the sea; but the fifth bark stood gallantly in for the Wash, with nearly all her sails up. Swift as it bounded over the waves, it was dark night before the foremost bark reached the little cape where stands the chapel of our Ladie.[[112]] Here the bark showed three lights at her mast-head, and then three lights over her prow, and then three over her stern. Quickly as might be, these lights from on board the fifth and foremost bark were answered by three times three of lights on the belfry of Our Ladie’s chapel; and had it not been for the roaring of the winds and the loud dashing of the sea on the resounding shore, those on land by Our Ladie’s chapel might have heard a three times three of hearty cheers from those on shipboard, and those on the ship might have heard every cheer given back with interest and increase by the crowd of true Saxons that stood by the chapel. The bark next showed at her masthead a broad blue light, such as had never been seen before in these parts; and presently from the lee side of the Inner Dousing four other bright blue lights gleamed across the black sky; and having in this wise answered signal, the four barks followed in the track of the fifth and came up with it off Our Ladie’s chapel. Still keeping a little in advance, like the pilot and admiral of the little fleet, the bark that had first reached the coast glided into Lynn Deeps; and as it advanced towards the mouth of the Ouse, signal-lights or piloting lights rose at every homestead and hamlet, from Kitcham[[113]] to Stone’s-end, from Stone’s-end to Castle Rising, and from Castle Rising to the good town of Lynn. And besides these stationary lights, there were other torches running along the shore close above the line of sea foam. And much was all this friendly care needed, the deeps being narrow and winding and the shoals and sand-banks showing themselves on every side, and the wind still blowing a hurricane, and the masts of the barks bending and cracking even under the little sail that they now carried. On this eastern side of the Wash few could have slept, or have tarried in their homes this night; for when—near upon midnight, and as the monks of Lynn were preparing to say matins in the chapel of Saint Nicholas—the five barks swirled safely into the deep and easy bed of the Ouse, and came up to the prior’s wharf, and let go their anchors, and threw their stoutest cordage ashore, to the end that the mariners there might make them fast, and so give a double security against wind and tide, the wharf and all the river bank was covered with men, women, and children, and the houses in the town behind the river bank were nearly all lighted up, as if it had been Midsummer’s eve, instead of being the penultimate night[[114]] of the Novena of Christmas. It was not difficult to make out that the foremost of the barks and one other belonged to Lynn, inasmuch as the Lynn folk leaped on board of them as soon as they were made fast at the wharf, calling upon their town fellows, their brothers or sons, and hugging them more Saxonico[[115]] when they found them out on the crowded decks. The other barks were of foreign structure, and the mariners seemed to be all foreigners; but the many passengers in each of them were all Englishmen, and landsmen besides; for they had all been very sea-sick, and were now very impatient to get their feet upon dry land.
The first that landed from the foremost bark was a tall, robust, and handsome man, dressed as Saxon noblemen and warriors were wont to dress before the incoming of the ill fashions of Normandie.
He carried in his right hand a long straight and broad sword, the blade of which was curiously sheathed, and the hilt of which formed a cross. When he had crossed the plankings of the wharf, and reached the solid ground, he knelt on one knee and kissed the cross of his sword; and then throwing himself prone upon the earth, and casting wide his arms as though he would embrace it and hug it, he kissed the insensate soil, and thanked his God and every saint in the Saxon calendar for that he had been restored to the land which gave him birth, and which held the dust and bones of his fathers. Some who had seen him in former days on the Spalding side of the Wash, and some who had been apprised of his coming, began instantly to shout, “It is he!—it is Lord Hereward of Brunn! It is Hereward the Saxon! It is the Lord of Brunn, come to get back his own and to help us to drive out the Normans.” The shouts were taken up on every side, mariners and landsmen, foreigners and home-born fensmen, and women and children, crying, “It is Hereward the Saxon! Long live the young Lord of Brunn, who will never shut his hall-door in the face of a poor Englishman, nor turn his back on a Frenchman!” Some hemmed him in, and kissed his hands, and the sheath of his long straight sword, and the skirts of his mantle, and the very sandals on his feet; while others held their glaring torches close over his head, that they might see him and show him to their mates. It was one Nan of Lynn, and a well-famed and well-spoken woman, that said, as she looked upon the Lord Hereward, “We Englishwomen of the fens will beat the men-at-arms from Normandie, an we be but led by such a captain as this; with that steel cap on his head, and that scarlet cloak over his shoulders, he looks every inch as stalwart and as handsome a warrior as the archangel Michael, whose portraiture we see in our church!”