When the Lord of Brunn and Girolamo of Salerno had done laughing, the Lord Hereward said, “Let this goodly hall be cleared of this foul rubbish. Girolamo, see these intruders carried on board the bark and thrown into the hold. We will send them to my Lord Abbat at Ely, that they may be kept as hostages. But tell the shipmen not to hurt a hair of their heads.”
When the alien monks understood that they must go, they clamoured about their goods and properties. This made Hereward wroth, and he said, “When ye thrust out the good English monks, ye gave them nought! Nevertheless I will give ye all that ye brought with ye.”
Here the voice that had spoken before from under the heap said, “We all know we brought nothing with us—no, not so much as the gear we wear! Therefore let us claim nothing, but hasten to be gone, and so hope to get back the sooner into Normandie.”
But the prior and the sacrist and divers others continued to make a great outcry about their goods, their holy-books, their altar vases, their beds and their bed-clothes; and as this moved Lord Hereward’s ire, he said to his merry men that they must turn them out; and the merry men all did turn them out by pulling them before and kicking them behind: and in this manner the unlettered and unholy crew that Ivo Taille-Bois had thrust into the succursal cell of Spalding were lugged and driven on shipboard, and there they were made fast under the hatches. As soon as they were all cleared out of the convent, Lord Hereward bade his Saxons put more fuel on the fire, and bring up more wine, and likewise see what might be in the buttery. The brother of Wybert the wright knew the way well both to cellar and buttery; and finding both well filled, he soon re-appeared with wine and viands enough. And so Hereward and his men warmed themselves by the blazing fire, and ate and drank most merrily and abundantly: and when all had their fill, and all had drunk a deep health to Hereward the liberator, they went into the monk’s snug cells, and so fast to sleep.
On the morrow morning they rose betimes. So featly had the thing been done over night, that none knew it but those who had been present. The good folk that yet remained in Spalding town, though so close at hand, had heard nothing of the matter. Hereward now summoned them to the house; but having his reasons for wishing not to be known at this present, he deputed one of his men to hold a conference with them, and to tell the few good men of Spalding that the hour of deliverance was at hand, that their false monks had been driven away, and that Father Adhelm and their true monks would soon return: whereat the Spalding folk heartily rejoiced. In the present state of the road, or rather of the waters, there was no fear of any Norman force approaching the succursal cell. Therefore Lord Hereward ordered that much of his munition of war should be landed and deposited in the convent: and leaving therein all his armed men with Girolamo of Salerno, he embarked alone in the lightest of his barks, and went up the river as far as the point that was nearest to Brunn. There, leaving the bark and all the sailors, and taking with him nought but his sword and his fen-staff, and covering himself with an old and tattered seaman’s coat, he landed and struck across the fens, and walked, waded, leaped, and swam, until he came within sight of his own old manor-house and the little township of Brunn.[[124]] It was eventide, and the blue smoke was rising from the manor-house and from the town, as peacefully as in the most peaceful days. Hereward stopped and looked upon the tranquil scene, as he had done so many times before at the same hour in the days of his youth, when returning homeward from some visit, or from some fowling in the fens; and as he looked, all that had since passed became as a dream; and then he whistled and stepped gaily forward, as if his father’s house was still his own house,[[125]] and his father there to meet and bless him. But, alack! his father was six feet under the sod of the churchyard, and a fierce Norman was in the house, with many men-at-arms. Awakening from his evening dream, and feeling that the invasion of England was no dream—the bloody battle of Hastings no dream—the death of his father no dream—and that it was a sad reality that he was a dispossessed man, barred out by force and by fraud from his own, the young Lord of Brunn avoided the direct path to the manor-house, and struck into a narrow sloppy lane which led into the township. As he came among the low houses, or huts, the good people where beginning to bar their doors for the night. “They will open,” said Hereward, “when they know who is come among them!” He made straight for the abode of one who had been his foster brother; and he said as he entered it, “Be there true Saxon folk in the house?”
“Yea,” said the man of the house.
“Then wilt thou not be sorry to see Hereward the Saxon and thy foster-brother;” and so saying he unmuffled himself and threw off his dirty ship cloak; and his foster brother fell at his feet, and kissed his hand, and hugged his knee, and said, “Is it even my young Lord Hereward?” and so wept for joy.
“It is even I,” said the young Lord of Brunn; “it is even I come back to get mine own, and to get back for every honest man his own. But honest men must up and help. Will the honest folk of Brunn strike a blow for Hereward and for themselves? Will the town-people, and my kith and kindred and friends in the old days, receive and acknowledge me?”
It was the wife of the foster-brother that was now kneeling and clasping Hereward’s knee, and that said, “The women of Brunn would brand every catiff in the township that did not throw up his cap and rejoice, and take his bill-hook and bow in his hand for the young Lord of Brunn!”
Every one of the notables was summoned presently; and they all recognised Hereward as their true lord and leader, vowing at the same time that they would follow him into battle against the Normans, and do his bidding whatever it might be. Many were the times that Hereward was forced to put his finger upon his lip to recommend silence; for they all wanted to hail his return with hearty Saxon shouts, and he wanted to avoid rousing the Normans in the manor-house for the present. The welcome he received left him no room to doubt of the entire affection and devotion of the town-folk; and the intelligence he gleaned was more satisfactory than he had anticipated. Raoul, a Norman knight, and, next to Ivo Taille-Bois, the most powerful and diabolical of all the Normans in or near to the fen-country, held the manor-house, and levied dues and fees in the township; but many of those who dwelt in the neighbourhood, and who had held their lands under the last quiet old Lord of Brunn, had never submitted to the intruder, nor had Raoul and his men-at-arms been able to get at them in their islands among the fens and deep waters. There was John of the Bogs, who had kept his house and gear untouched, and who could muster a score or twain of lusty hinds, well armed with pikes and bill-hooks and bows; there was Ralph of the Dyke, the chamberlain of the last Lord of Brunn, who had beaten off Raoul and his men-at-arms in a dozen encounters; there were other men, little less powerful than these two, who would be up and doing if Lord Hereward would only show himself, or only raise his little finger. The manor-house was well fortified and garrisoned; but what of that? For Lord Hereward it should be stormed and taken, though it should cost a score or twain of lives. Here the young Lord of Brunn told them that he hoped to get back his house without wasting a single drop of the blood of any of them, inasmuch as he had practised men of war not far from hand, together with engines of war proper for sieges. He bade them spread far and near the news of his return: he begged them to do this cautiously, and to remain quiet until he should come back among them; in the meanwhile they might be making such preparations for war as their means allowed. To-morrow night it would be the full of moon; and as soon as the good town-folk should see the moon rising over Elsey Wood[[126]] they might expect him and his force. And now he must take a short repast and a little sleep, so as to be able to commence his return to the Welland river before midnight.