“’Tis well,” quoth Kenulph, licking his lips and rubbing his hands, “’tis better than well! So follow me, and when thou comest to the upper regions make no noise, for the Lord Abbat Thurstan is deposed from his authority and is sick unto death; the abbey is in the hands of the prior and his crew; and we and a few more honest members of the house are flying from it to get the stores at Turbutsey, and to give warning to the Lord of Brunn, that the false monks of Ely have sold and betrayed him.”
“I thought as much as all this,” quoth the sword-bearer; and without asking any questions, he followed the cloister-monk and the lay-brother to the gatekeeper’s chamber, praising and blessing the saints for this his so speedy deliverance. As he entered the room, reverentially saluting the other cloister-monks, the porter gave him his sword, which had been snatched from him upon his being first seized under the gateway. Next the stout porter took down some swords and spears, and fen-poles, that hung in his room, and armed his friends and himself with them; and then, in less than a Credo, the whole party got out of the monastery through the wicket-gate, and, first closing and fastening the wicket on the outside, they all took the broad high road that leads to Turbutsey. Six good cloister-monks, and ten good lay-brothers and servientes, were there in this company; but all the rest of the convent remained behind to await the slaughter of their countrymen in the Camp, to welcome the Normans to Ely, and to get from them—that which they deserved. Elfric and Tom of Tottington (an expert fenner, and much fitter to be a soldier than the waiting-man of a monk) presently quitted the road to take a rough path across the fens which led directly into the Camp: the rest hastened on to Turbutsey, and as they arrived there before the midnight, they were in good time to aid the true men Elfric had left there in getting the good stores across the river and well into the fens. Some of the party would have left the body of Girolamo behind at Turbutsey, or would have thrown it into the river; but the people said what Elfric had said to them concerning the dead body, and the fighting men who had fought the Normans near Brandon, and who had seen with their own eyes the Christian end the Salernitan had made, all declared that Girolamo must have Christian burial in some consecrated place where the Normans could not disturb his ashes.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE NORMANS IN THE CAMP.
The Camp of Refuge, wherein the Saxons had so long withstood the violent threats of the Normans, was not in itself a very noticeable place. But for the army and the last hopes of England collected therein, the wayfarer might have passed it without any especial observation, there being several such places in the Fen country, partly surrounded by embankments of earth, and wholly girded in, and doubly or trebly girded by rivers, ditches, pools, and meres. The embankments had been first made, in very remote ages, by those who first attempted to drain parts of the fen country; but tradition said that these peaceful works had been made to serve the purposes of defensive war, in those days when the Iceni stood against their Roman invaders, when the Britons stood against the first Saxons, and when the Saxons opposed the marauding Danes. The embankments which were made to keep out the water, and confine the rivers to their beds, were proper to keep out an enemy, even if he could reach them; and the fenners, who kept solely to the business of grazing, fishing, and fowling, knew best how to defend and how to stock such places. In the upland countries men took shelter on the high hills; but here, when an enemy approached, men threw themselves within these flats and enclosures in the midst of the waters, taking with them their herds and flocks, and their hooks and nets for fishing, and their snares for fowling. At the first sound of this Norman invasion, and before any Saxon lord or knight fled for refuge into the Isle of Ely, the people of the country drove their fattening beeves into the enclosed but wide space which afterwards came to be called the Camp, but which for a long season bore rather the appearance of a grazing-field than that of a place of arms; and even when the Saxon lords and knights came and gathered together their armed followers on that green grassy spot, the space was so wide that the cattle were left to remain where they were, and the many cowherds and shepherds were mixed with the Saxon soldiery, each by times doing the duty of the other; and now, when well-nigh everything else was consumed and gone, there remained within the broad limits of the Camp great droves of the finest and fattest cattle.
There was no moon, and the night was of the darkest, when Elfric approached the Camp, flying along the ground like a lapwing. As watches were set, and as the men were vigilant as became the soldiers of the Lord of Brunn, he was challenged sundry times before he reached his lord’s tent. Hereward was asleep, but at the voice and tidings of his sword-bearer he was presently up and armed, and ready to go the round of the Camp.
“Elfric,” said Hereward, “if the traitorous monks of Ely shall have called in their own people, who formed our outer guard, and have given the Normans the clue to the watery labyrinth which has been our strength and safety so long, we may still hold out against more than one assault behind the embankments of this Camp, provided only our people do not get panic-stricken by the suddenness of the attack, and in the darkness of this night. Would that it were morning! But come what may, there is one comfort: we shall have our harness on our backs before the fight begins!”
And having so said, the Lord of Brunn, followed by his sword-bearer, went from post to post to bid the men be on the alert, and from tent to tent, or from hut to hut, to rouse the sleeping chiefs to tell them that the monks of Ely were traitors to the good cause, and that the Normans were coming; and when this was done, Hereward, with an unperturbed spirit, and with all that knowledge of war which he had acquired beyond sea, and from the knowing Salernitan, and from all that quickness which nature had given him, laid down his plan for defending the interior of the Camp, and appointed every chief to the post he should hold, speaking cheerfully to them all, and telling them that five years had passed since the battle of Hastings, and that England was not conquered yet; and that if the Normans should be foiled in this attack, their loss would be terrible, their retreat across the fens almost impracticable.
By the time all this was said and done it was more than two hours after the midnight hour, and it had scarcely been done ere the war-cry of the Normans was heard close under the south-western face of the Camp. By using the name of the Abbat Thurstan, the false prior had made the people of the abbey abandon the fords in that direction; and by the same false prior’s procurement, a traitorous fenner had guided the Normans through the labyrinth. But there was more fatal mischief yet to proceed from the same dark cauldron and source of evil. Some other traitor, serving among the retainers of the abbey that had been left quartered in the Camp, because they could not be withdrawn without Lord Hereward’s order set up the cry that the Saxons were all betrayed, and that the Normans had gotten into the Camp; and thereupon the poor bewildered wights, who knew but too well that the Norman war-cry could be heard where it was heard only through treachery, fell into disorder and dismay, and abandoning the post which they had been appointed to hold, and disregarding the voice of their commander, they fled across the Camp, shouting, “Treason! treason! Fly, Saxons, fly!”
The Normans began to enter the Camp in overpowering numbers; and although the first glimmerings of day began to be seen from the east, it was still so dark that it was hard to distinguish between friend and foe. But Hereward soon found himself at the spot where the danger was greatest; and the foe, who had not yet recovered from the dread of his name, halted at the shouts of “Hereward for England!” and were soon driven out of the Camp, with a great slaughter. Whilst this was doing on the south-western side, another host of Normans, under the same traitorous guidance, got round towards the north face of the Camp, and after some hard fighting, got over the embankment, and into the Camp. Leaving a brave old Saxon earl and his people to keep the ground he had recovered, Hereward rushed with Elfric and his own choice band to the northern side; and although the distance was considerable, his battle-axe was ringing among the Normans there before they had found time to form themselves in good fighting order. But Odo, the fighting bishop, was among these Normans; and thus knights and men-at-arms fought most valiantly, and held the ground they had gained for a long time. Nevertheless, just as the rising sun was shining on the tower of Ely Abbey, Odo and his host, or such of his host as survived, retreated the way they had come; but while they were in the act of retreating, Duke William led in person an assault on another part of the Camp; and on the south-west side, the brave old Saxon earl being slain, his men gave way, and the Normans again rushed in on that side. Also, and at nearly the same instant of time, Norman spears were discerned coming round upon the Camp from other quarters. As he paused to deliberate whither he should first direct his steps, and as he shook the blood from the blade and shaft of his battle-axe—a ponderous weapon which no other man then in England could wield—the Lord of Brunn, still looking serenely, bespoke his sword-bearer, “May God defend the house of Ely and the Lord Abbat; but the knavish monks have done the work of treachery very completely! They must have made known unto the Normans all the perilous passages of the fens. We are beset all about! But we must even drive the Normans back again. Numerous are they, yet their knights love not to fight on foot, and they can have brought few horses or none across the swamps. But Elfric, my man, thou art bleeding! Art much hurt?”