Quoth the Lord of Brunn, “Ye will not do the thing ye name! or, an ye do it, bitterly will ye rue it! Your names be all down in a book of doom: the Normans will mutilate and butcher ye all! Better that ye die fighting! The battle is not lost, if ye will but think it is not. I was with King Harold at the battle by Stamford Bridge, and in a worse plight than now; and yet on that day we conquered. So, up hearts, my Saxon lords and thanes! Let us make one charge more for King Harold and the liberties of England! Nay, we will make a score good charges ere we die!”
But the Magnates would not be heartened, nor take up the shields and the arms they had thrown down; and when the reinforced battalia of the Norman centre formed once more into line, and levelled their spears, and when the rest of that countless Norman host began to close round the Saxon army in the midst of the Camp, all the fighting men that obeyed these Saxon lords threw down their arms, and cried for quarter—for forgiveness and mercy!
Sad and sick was the heart of the Lord of Brunn; but this lasted but for a moment, and his eye was bright and his face joyous as he shouted to Elfric and the rest of his own devoted band, “Let the fools that court dishonour and mutilation, and an opprobrious grave, stay here and yield; but let those who would live in freedom or die with honour follow me! We will cut our way out of this foully betrayed Camp, and find another Camp of Refuge where there be no monks of Ely for neighbours!”
And at these good words three hundred stout Saxons and more formed themselves into a compact column, and the Lord of Brunn, with Elfric by his side, put himself in the head of the column, and the band shouted again, “Hereward for England! Saxons, remember Hastings!” Then were heard the voices of command all along the different Norman lines, and from the right and from the left, from behind and from before, those lines began to move and to close, and to form living barriers and hedgerows of lances on every side: and next, near voices were heard offering fifty marks of gold to the man that should slay or seize the traitor Hereward. But the Norman was not yet born that could withstand the battle-axe of the Lord of Brunn: and so the Norman lines yielded to his charge, and so he led his three hundred Saxons and more triumphantly out of the Camp and across the fens—yea, over rivers and streams and many waters, where Normans could not follow—until they came into a thick wood of willows, where they found the six good cloister-monks and the ten good lay-brothers who had fled with Elfric from Ely Abbey, and the party of true men from Turbutsey, who had carried with them the corn, meal, and wine, and likewise the body of Girolamo of Salerno. Loudly was the Lord of Brunn greeted by every man that was in the wood. The first thing that was done after his coming was to bury the Salernitan. Near the edge of the wood, and by the side of a stream, the monks of Ely of the old time had built a small mass-house for the conveniency of the souls of some of the fenners, who could not always quit their fishing and fowling and go so far as the abbey church; and on a green dry hillock, at the back of the mass-house, there was a small cœmeterium holding the wattled graves of not a few of the fenners.
“This ground,” said Father Celred, “is consecrated ground; the Normans will not soon get hither, and we will leave no cross and make no sign to show the stranger’s grave; and every man here is too true a man ever to betray the secret to the Normans.”
“And when better days come, we will provide some suitable monument for the stranger who died in fighting for the Saxon. Girolamo, thou art happy in that thou hast not lived to see this foul morning! Father Celred, fathers all, I warrant ye he was a true son of the church, and died a good Christian. So withhold not to do the rites and give him Christian burial.”
Thus spake the Lord of Brunn as he gazed upon the awfully placid face of the Salernitan, whose body lay uncovered upon a rustic bier: and the good monks all said that they doubted not, and would never doubt, the word of Lord Hereward. And the Saxon hinds, under the direction of Elfric, rapidly scooped out a grave on the sunniest side of the green hillock, on the side which faced the south and was turned toward the sunny land in which the stranger was born; and when the grave was made, Hereward took his own good mantle from his shoulders and piously wrapped it round the dead body to serve it instead of shroud and coffin, which could not be had; and then Father Celred blessed the grave, and the lay-brothers laid the body reverentially in it; and then all the monks that had come from Ely said the service for the dead and chanted the De Profundis. Next the earth was thrown in, and the green sods, which had been removed carefully and piecemeal, were laid upon the surface and joined together so as to unite and grow together in a few days, making the spot look like the rest of the sward: and thus, without mound or withy-bound hillock, without a stone or a cross, was left all that could die of Girolamo the Salernitan—far, far, far away from the land of his birth and of his love. Yet was his lowly grave not unhonoured.
After these sad offices, Hereward and his party refreshed themselves with wine and bread, and renewed their march, going in the direction of the river Welland and the succursal cell at Spalding.[[242]]
And, meanwhile, how fared it with the Saxon idiots in the Camp who had cast down their weapons, and trusted to Norman mercy and to Norman promises?—How fared it? In sooth it fared with them as the Lord of Brunn had foretold, and as it ever hath fared with men that surrendered when they ought to have fought on. The conquerors, in summing up the amount of the harm they did to the Camp of Refuge, counted not the lives of the churls and serfs—which went for nothing in their eyes—but they put down that they slew, after the fight was over, of Saxon nobles and knights and fighting-men of gentle blood, more than a thousand. But happy those who were slain outright! A thousandfold worse the fate of those that were let live: their right hands and their right feet were cut off, their eyes were put out, and they were cast upon the wide world to starve, or were thrown into loathsome dungeons to rot, or transported beyond the seas to exhibit their misery to the scornful eyes of the people of Normandie and Anjou, to remain living monuments of Duke William’s vengeance, and to be a terror to such as presumed to dispute his authority. In this way some of the noblest of the land were sent into Normandie. Egelwin, the good Bishop of Durham, being found in the Camp, was sent a close prisoner to Abingdon, where he died shortly after of a broken heart. Never yet heard we of a fight more noble than that of the Camp of Refuge, while the Lord of Brunn was there and the Saxons in heart to fight; and never yet was there a sadder scene than that which followed upon his departure thence! Except cattle and sheep, and armour and arms, and human bodies to hack and destroy, the Normans found scarcely anything in the Camp, wherein they had expected to make great booty.
And how fared it with the guilty prior and the traitorous monks of Ely? Did they profit by their great treason? Were peace and joy their lot when the blood of their countrymen had been poured out like water? Did they and their house thrive after all that torture and horror in the Camp? Not so! not so! Those who deal in treachery reap treachery for their reward; and all men hate and scorn even the traitors who have most served them. Before the butchery in the Camp was well over, a great band of Normans ran to the abbey and took forcible possession of it, and beat and reviled the monks because they did not bring forth the money and the bread and wine which they had not to give; and these rude soldiers lodged themselves in the house, and turned all the monks into the barns and outhouses—all but a few, who remonstrated and resisted, and who where therefore thrown into that noxious prison underground into which they had cast Elfric the night before. And on the morrow of the fight in the Camp, the Norman Duke[[243]] himself went up to the abbey with all his great chiefs, saying that he would pay his devotions at the shrine of St. Etheldreda, albeit she was but a Saxon saint. And William did go into the church, and kneel at the shrine of the saint. Yea, he did more than this, for he laid his offering upon the shrine. But what was the princely offering of this great prince who ruled on both sides of the sea?—It was just one single mark of gold,[[244]] and that a mark which had been in the hands of the Jews and clipped! And when he had made this splendid donation, he called the monks together in the hall, and told them that they must pay unto him a thousand marks of gold as the price of his pardon for the long rebellion they had been in. And when the chapfallen chamberlain said, and said truly, that there was no money in the house, a sneering Norman knight told him that there were Jews at Norwich, and that the monks must get money by pledging their lands and by giving bonds to the Israelites. The good Abbat Thurstan, being still sick in his bed, escaped the sight of much of this woe: but when the prior knelt at the foot of Duke William, and said that he trusted he would be merciful to the ruined house, and continue him as the head of it, and sanction his election by the brotherhood as lord abbat, the Duke swore his great oath, “By the splendour of God’s face,” that he was not so minded; and that Abbat Thurstan should be abbat still, inasmuch as he was a man of noble birth and of a noble heart. Sundry great Saxon lords, who had long since made their peace with the Norman, had spoken well for the high-born Thurstan; but that which decided the mind of Duke William was the reflection that, if so true and stout a man as Thurstan promised him his allegiance, he would prove true to his promise at whatsoever crisis; while no faith or trust could be put in the promises and vows of such a man as the prior. And thus Thurstan[[245]] was told on his sick-bed that his rule was restored, and that he should be allowed to appoint and have a new set of officials, instead of the prior, the chamberlain, the sacrist and sub-sacrist the cellarer, and all the rest that had been rebellious and traitorous unto him—provided only that he would promise to be at peace with the Normans. And, after Thurstan had been most solemnly assured by some of the Saxon thanes who came to the abbey with the Conqueror, that King Harold, his benefactor, was assuredly dead, and lay buried in Waltham Abbey, and that good terms would be granted to his friend my Lord of Brunn if he would but cease the hopeless contest, Thurstan promised to live in peace and to think no more of resistance: and before Duke William departed from the house of Ely the lord abbat saluted him as King of England, and put his hand into his hand as a token and pledge that he was and would be true and liege man unto him. It cost his Saxon heart a pang which almost made it crack; but having thus pledged himself, nothing upon earth, being earthly, would ever make Thurstan untrue to the Norman.