“Well in!” said Elfric; “as many as we let come over the bridge are in up to their chins, and Ivo and his brother came on first!”
“It pleaseth me well,” quoth Hereward, as he ran down the hill followed by his sword-bearer; “it pleaseth me right well! I did not expect the two caitiffs quite so soon; but since they are come, I vow by every saint that ever spoke the Saxon tongue, that they shall be witnesses to my marriage, and after they shall be bidden to my wedding feast!”
“I wish them a good appetite,” said Elfric.
A scant mile beyond the church hill and the linden-grove there ran a narrow but very deep stream, which was crossed by an old wooden bridge. All persons coming from Stamford must pass this river; and Hereward had been properly advised of all Ivo’s intentions and of all his movements. Girolamo had been hard at work over-night upon the bridge, and by his good science the timbers of the bridge were so cut into pieces and put together again, that he could allow any given number of persons to cross, and then by a simple operation disjoint the bridge and pull it to pieces so that no more should pass. To contain the water within its bed some broad embankments of earth had been made in very old times near to the bridge; and under cover of these embankments nearly all the armed Saxons had been mustered by Lord Hereward at a very early hour in the morning, yet not until divers other traps and pitfalls had been prepared for the Normans. As the Lord of Brunn and the Ladie Alftrude were walking from the manor-house to the church, the good men lying in ambush by the river side discovered a great troop pressing along the half-inundated road towards the bridge. These Normans had not been able to get their horses across the fens, and therefore were they all coming on afoot, cursing the bogs and pools and making a loud outcry when they ought all to have been silent. Girolamo and Elfric, who were holding some coils of rope in their hands behind the embankment, presently heard Ivo Taille-Bois say to his brother, “Vive Notre Dame, the wooden bridge is standing! The fools have not had wit enough to see that it ought to be cut down! Set me down this Hereward for an ass! Come on Geoffroy, this detestable footmarch is all but over. Behind that hill and grove stands thy manor-house, and therein thy bride.”
“We shall soon see that,” said Elfric to himself, “and thou shalt soon see whose bride the Ladie Alftrude is.”
This while Girolamo was peeping at the head of the Norman column; and he kept peeping until Ivo Taille-Bois and his brother Geoffroy and some half-score men-at-arms came upon the bridge and fairly crossed it. And then, as the rest of the diabolical band were about to follow, Elfric gave a shrill whistle, and tugged at his rope, and other good Saxons pulled hard at other ropes, and in the twinkling of an eye the bridge fell to pieces, and Ivo and his brother and such as had followed them remained on this side of the bridge, and the rest of the Normans remained on the other side of the bridge. And then a score of horns sounded lustily along the ambuscaded line, and fourscore well-armed Saxons vaulted from their wet lair to the top of the embankments, and set up a shout, and sent such a flight of arrows across the river as put the Normans on the other side to a rapid flight along the causeway. Ivo and his brother and the rest that had crossed the bridge ran along the inner bank of the river followed by hearty laughter and a few sharp arrows from the Saxons; but they had not gone far when what seemed hard and dry ground broke in under their feet, and let them all drop into a quagmire or pool, one not quite so foul as some of those by Crowland Abbey, but still foul enough.[[145]] It was not until he saw them safely deposited in this place that Elfric went in search of his master; and as he went off for the church he enjoined the Saxons, in Lord Hereward’s name, to do the Normans no further hurt.
Now, as the Lord of Brunn strode down from the hill towards the river side, and as the Saxons on the embankment shouted, “Hereward for England!” Ivo Taille-Bois, all in his woeful plight, looked hard at the Saxon warrior, and as Hereward came nearer Ivo said, “Peste! brother Geoffroy, but this Hereward is the very man that shivered my shield with his battle-axe and unhorsed me at Hastings. An I had thought he had been so near I would not have come with thee on thy accursed wooing!”
“Brother Ivo,” said Geoffroy, “it is thou that hast brought me into this evil with thy mad talk about Saxon heiresses. But let us confess our sins, for our last moment is at hand. My feet are sinking deeper and deeper in the mud: I can scarcely keep my mouth above the surface of this feculent pool!”
When the Lord of Brunn came up to the edge of the pool with Elfric and Girolamo, and all his merry men who had been standing on the embankments, and who could no longer see the Normans who had fled from the opposite side of the river,[[146]] the Norman men-at-arms that were floundering in the pool with their leader set up a cry about misericorde and ransom; and even the great Taille-Bois himself called out lustily for quarter; while his brother, who was a shorter man, cried out that he would rather be killed by the sword than by drowning, and piteously implored the Saxons to drag out of that foul pool no less a knight than Geoffroy Taille-Bois.
“Verily,” said Elfric, who understood his French, “verily, Master Geoffroy, thou art in a pretty pickle to come a-wooing to the fairest and noblest maiden in all England.”