The person nearest in attendance on Lord Hereward was that lucky wight Elfric, who had been to seek him in foreign parts; but it was Elfric no longer attired either as a tattered menestrel or as a shaveling novice, but as something betwixt a blithesome page and an armed retainer. He too had more than one tear of joy in his eye as he trod upon the shore; but this tender emotion soon gave way to a hearty if not boisterous mirth, and so he kept shouting, “Make way for Hereward the Lord of Brunn!” and kept squeezing the hands of all the men and women and children he knew in Lynn, as they walked towards the convent where Hereward was to rest until daylight. Next to Elfric, the man that seemed most entirely devoted to the service and to the person of Hereward was a slight, slim man of middle stature and very dark complexion; his hair was long, and would have been blacker than the plumage of the raven save that time had touched it here and there with grey; his nose was arched like the beak of a goshawk; and his eye, that looked out from under a very black and bushy but very lofty eyebrow, was blacker and keener than the eye of any hawk or other fowl of prey. Some who had seen now and then a wandering Israelite, thought that this stranger looked marvellously like a Jew; but this was a marvellous mistake. None could think him either young or handsome; yet was there something about his person and in his face that none could help looking at, and then remembering for aye. Among the stout Saxons were some that could have taken the dark, slim stranger between their finger and thumb, and have squeezed the life out of him with as much ease as boys crack nuts; but there was a quickness and sharpness in the stranger’s eye that seemed to say he could outwit them all if he chose. On the way to the convent Hereward several times addressed him in some foreign tongue, and seemed by his looks to be taking advice of him.
As the convent was but a dependency of my Lord Abbat Thurstan, and a succursal cell to Ely, ye may judge whether the Lord of Brunn and those who came with him met with hospitality! Saxons and strangers (and all landed from the barks as soon as might be, and hastened to the convent) found suppers and beds, or suppers and clean sweet rushes to lie upon, either with the sub-prior or in the guest-house. In the morning, as soon as it was light, Hereward, Elfric, and the dark stranger, and a score of armed men, re-embarked in the good ship that had brought them to Lynn, and proceeded up the river Ouse, leaving the other four barks at their moorings under the prior’s wharf. These four craft were to keep a good look-out, and in case of any armed ships coming into the Wash they were to run, through the most intricate passage, for Spalding; but if no enemy should appear (and of this there was scarcely a chance, as the weather continued stormy, and the Normans were bad seamen, and very badly provided with shipping), they were all to wait at Lynn until Lord Hereward should come back from Ely to lead them to Spalding, and, farther still, to his own house at Brunn.
Broad and free was the river Ouse, and up as high as the junction of the Stoke[[116]] Lord Hereward’s bark was favoured by the tide as well as by the wind. Above the Stoke the tide failed; but the wind blew steadily on, and many boats, with lusty rowers in them, came down from Ely and Chettisham and Littleport, and took the bark in tow, for the signal-lights and fires which had guided the fleet into Lynn had been carried across the fens and to the Abbey of Ely, and had told my Lord Abbat that the Lord Hereward was come. No bark had ever made such voyage before, nor have many made it since; but a good while before the sun went down our Lynn mariners made their craft fast to my Lord Abbat’s pier, and Hereward and his bold and trusty followers landed in the midst of a throng ten times greater and ten times more jubilant than that which had welcomed them at Lynn. Before quitting the ship Elfric put on his monastic habit. This he did not do without a sigh; and he carried with him under his novice’s gown the gay dress he had worn while in foreign parts and on shipboard. Maybe he expected that services might be required from him in which such an attire would be useful; or perhaps he hoped that his superior of Spalding and the Abbat of Crowland would, in considering the services he had rendered already, determine in their wisdom that the dress and calling of a monk were not those which suited him best. Although not bound by any irrevocable vow, Elfric was bound by the ties of gratitude to Father Adhelm, who had taken him into the succursal cell at Spalding when a very young and helpless orphan; and Elfric would never have been the man he proved himself if he had been forgetful of duties and obligations.
At the outer gate of the convent Lord Hereward was met and embraced and welcomed by the high-hearted abbat of the house, by the Archbishop Stigand, the Abbat of Crowland, and by all the prelates and high churchmen; and next by all the cloistered monks of Ely; and next by the lay lords and the Saxon warriors of all parts: and all this right reverend and right noble company shouted, “Welcome to our chief and our deliverer! Honour and welcome to the young Lord of Brunn!”
As Thurstan led the Saxon hero by the hand towards his own Aula Magna, he said, “But for the solemn season, which brooks not much noise,” (the town folk, and the hinds that had come in from the fens, and the novices and lay-brothers, were continuing to shout and make noise enough to wake the dead that were sleeping in the cloisters), “we would have received you, my lord, with a great clattering of bells and show of flags and banners! Nevertheless thou comest at a most suitable moment and on the very verge of the most joyous of all seasons; ’tis the vigil of the Nativity. On this Christmas eve, like all well-regulated religious houses and all good Christians, we fast upon a banquet of eels and fish. At midnight we have the midnight mass, chanted in our best manner; and to-morrow we feast indeed, and give up all our souls to joy. To-morrow, then, our bells shall be struck upon so that the Norman knights and men-at-arms shall hear them in Cam-Bridge Castle, and shall tremble while they hear! And our Saxon flags, and the banners of our saints, yea, the great banner of Saint Etheldreda itself, shall be hung out on our walls! And when the other duties of the day are over, we will sing a Te Deum laudamus for thy coming. My Lord Hereward, I have not known such joy, or half so much hope, since the day on which our good Edward (Rex venerandus) put this ring upon my finger and confirmed my election as abbat of this house! My hope then was that I should be enabled to be a good ruler of this ancient brotherhood, and good lord to all the Saxon folk that dwell on the land of Saint Etheldreda. Now my higher hope is that thou wilt be enabled, oh Hereward, to free all England from this cruel bondage!”
The young Saxon noble, being wholly a man of action, and gifted with much modesty, made but a very short reply to this and to other very long speeches; he simply said that he had come back to get back his own, and to help his good countrymen to get back their own; that the Norman yoke was all too grievous to be borne; that it was very strange and very sorrowful that brave King Harold came not back to his faithful people of East-Anglia; and that, until King Harold should come,[[117]] he, Hereward, would do his best for his friends and for himself.
Though all were eager to be informed of the strength which the Lord of Brunn brought with him, and of the plans he proposed to pursue, Thurstan thought it churlish to question any man fasting. Hereward, however, declared that he had fared well on board the bark, and could well wait till supper-time. And so, having closed the doors of the abbat’s great hall, the lords and prelates proceeded to deliberate with the dispossessed Lord of Brunn. The sum of Hereward’s replies to many questions and cross-questions (he having no genius for narration) was simply this:—Elfric had found him out in Flanders, and had delivered to him letters, and messages, and tokens which had determined him to quit his adoptive country and return to England. Many English exiles who had been living in the Netherlands had made up their minds to come over with him. Such money as they could command among them all, or borrow at interest from the traders of Flanders, who seriously felt the loss of their trade with England, had been applied to the purchase of warlike harness, and to the hiring and equipping of three foreign barks. The master of a bark from Lynn that chanced to be in those parts had offered his bark and the services of himself and crew for nothing, or for what his liege lord the Abbat of Ely might at any time choose to give him. The gold and silver which my Lord Abbat had sent with Elfric had been properly and profitably employed; and, besides spear-heads, and swords, and bows, and jackets of mail, the Lynn bark now lying at my Lord Abbat’s pier, and the other Lynn bark left behind at that town, had brought such a quantity of Rhenish and Mosel wine as would suffice for the consumption of the whole house until next Christmas. Counting the men that had come in all the barks, there were more than one hundred and ten true-hearted Saxons, well armed and equipped, and well practised in the use of arms, as well in the Saxon fashion as in the fashions used abroad; and every one of these men was proper to become a centurion, or the trainer and leader of a hundred of our fen-men. It was Lord Hereward’s notion that our great house at Ely and the Camp of Refuge would be best relieved or screened from any chance of attack, by the Saxons making at once a quick and sharp attack all along the Norman lines or posts to the north and north-west of the Isle of Ely, or from Spalding to Brunn, and Crowland, and Peterborough. Some thought that his lordship preferred beginning in this direction because his own estates and the lady of his love were there: we will not say that these considerations had no weight with him, but we opine that his plan was a good one, and that no great commander, such as Hereward was, would have begun the war upon the invaders in any other manner, time or place. Twenty of the armed men he had brought with him from their wearisome exile—or more than twenty if my Lord Abbat thought fit—he would leave at Ely; with the rest, who had been left with the ships at Lynn, he would go to the Welland river, and make a beginning.
“But thou canst not go yet awhile,” said Abbat Thurstan, thinking of the Christmas festivals and of the Rhenish wines; “thou canst not quit us, my son, until after the feast of the Epiphany! ’Tis but twelve days from to-morrow, and the Normans are not likely to be a-stirring during those twelve days.”
“True, my Lord Abbat,” said Hereward, “the Normans will be feasting and rejoicing; but it is on that very account that I must go forthwith in order to take them unprepared and attack their bands separately, while they are feasting. An ye, holy brothers, give me your prayers, and the saints grant me the success I expect, I shall have recovered for ye the house at Spalding and the abbey of Crowland, and for myself mine humble house at Brunn, before these twelve days be over.”
“Then,” said the abbat, “thou mayest be back and keep the feast of the Epiphany with us.”