All things were got ready for a retreat into the farthest parts of Lincolnshire, or into the impenetrable country upon the Wash, as expediency might dictate; for it was thought that the Normans, being so near, would not delay in bringing a great army against Spalding manor-house, and in making the most desperate efforts to seize the last great Saxon lord that was now in arms against them. But the autumn season was now at hand, and it was so ordained that the heavy rains set in earlier than usual, and fell more heavily and lasted longer than common, in such sort that the fens were laid under water and the roads made impassable. And although many boats of all sorts and sizes were collected, they could not be used, for a fresh gathering on the Scottish border[[252]] constrained Duke William to turn his attention thitherward and to dispatch to the river Tyne and to the river Tweed many of the warriors and shipmen that had been collected to complete the subjugation of the fen country. When these Normans were gone, Lord Hereward drove their monks once more from Crowland Abbey, and got possession of his house at Brunn and of the stores which had been there deposited; and after making many good forays into the upland country, he brought his brave fenners back to Spalding, together with a good number of Norman prisoners, of whom some were of high degree. The poor unhoused townfolk of Spalding found shelter for the winter in the large manor-house and in the succursal cell, or in Crowland Abbey, keeping themselves ready to move in the spring with the Lord of Brunn and his warlike band. There was abundance of wine and corn, and meat and fish, and all good things in this new Camp of Refuge; and the winter passed merrily away, with all due observation made of saints’ days and of all the feast days the Saxon church had appointed. But one feast there was which was more joyous than all the rest; and that was given by the Lord of Brunn, ever free of hand and large of soul, a short time before the quinzaine of the Nativity, when Elfric and Mildred were made man and wife. Their hands were joined by the same Alefricus Diaconus who had been Lord Hereward’s mass-priest at Brunn, and who had performed the marriage-rites for his lord and the Ladie Alftrude at Ey. But the true-hearted monks of Spalding, and the monks that had fled from Ely, took part in the ceremony in the chapel, as afterwards in the feast in the hall; for notwithstanding all the mischief that the monks of Ely had done him, Hereward was still homo monachorum, or a lover of monks—provided only they were true Saxon monks, and had no dealings with the Normans. But all true Saxons and bold fenners for many miles round feasted at Spalding on Elfric’s wedding day; the freed-men being entertained according to their degree, and the churls and serfs according to their degrees. Alefric, the deacon, put these things into a book, but the pages[[253]] are now missing.
CHAPTER XXVII.
HEREWARD STILL FIGHTS.
At the return of spring, Duke William being at Warwick Castle,[[254]] on the pleasant river Avon, gave forth his mandate for the collecting of a great army to proceed against the Lord of Brunn. Much had it vexed and grieved his proud soul that Hereward should have escaped from the Camp of Refuge in the Isle of Ely, and have made his name terrible in other parts: for, during the winter, Peterborough and Stamford—aye, Grantham and Newark—had heard the war-cry of the Lord of Brunn, and the Normans there had been plundered by his band; and further still, where Nottingham looks down upon Trent, Hereward had carried his successful foray. “By the splendour,” quoth Duke William, as he thought upon those things, “I would give back all the Saxon lives that were taken near Ely for the life of this one man, who hath more power of mischief in him than all the Saxons put together. Or I would give to him the broadest earldom in all England if he would but submit and be my liege-man! I need such a soldier, for the men that followed me from Normandie are become all rich in this fat land, and risk not themselves in battle as they used to do when their fortunes were to make by sword and lance. This shall be thought of again, albeit my half-brother Odo and all my Normans have vowed the death of that terrible Lord of Brunn, and think that every hide of land left to a Saxon is so much robbed from them.”
During the spring months another mighty host was collected from out of the several shires of Huntingdon, Cam-Bridge, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Warwick, and others; and viscomtes and comtes, and knights of great fame and long experience in war, were placed in command, and were ordered to encompass the Lord of Brunn, and make an end of him or of his resistance. No stores were spared; nothing was spared that was thought likely to forward the one great object. Scarcely had William made a greater array of strength when he first landed at Pevensey, to march against King Harold at Hastings.
But Hereward, that cunning captain and excellent soldier, inclytus miles, was not idle during this season: he went hither and thither throughout the country on the Wash and the whole fen country, calling upon the fenners to be steady and true to him and their native land; and to get their bows and arrows ready, and to sharpen such swords and axes, or bill-hooks and spear-heads, as they might have; and to be ever in a state of readiness to fight, if fighting could stead them, or to retreat with their cattle into the inaccessible places and the labyrinths among the waters and the meres. And the wandering menestrels and gleemen, who had been driven hitherward from all other parts of England, with Elfric, who was as good a gleemen as any of the number, went from one township in the fens to another, singing the Saxon songs which did honour to the Lord of Brunn, and told how often he had prevailed in fight over the Norman invaders. And at the sound of these songs the fenners gave up their peaceful occupations and prepared for war; while many hundreds went at once to join the standard of the Lord of Brunn. The men of Hoiland mounted themselves on their tall stilts, and came wading across marsh and mere unto the manor-house of Spalding; others came thither in their light skerries; others came on foot, with their fen-poles in their hands, leaping such waters and drains as could be leaped, and swimming across the rest like the water-fowls of the fens. Loud blew the Saxon horn everywhere: the monks of Ely could hear it in their cells by night, and their guests the Norman warriors, who ventured not to come forth beyond Hadenham or Turbutsey, could hear it in the hall or refectory by day. The country seemed all alive and stirring, and full of strange sights: but the strangest sight of all was that of the men from the shores of the Wash marching in troops on their high stilts, carrying their bows and quivers and swords and pikes at their backs, and looking, at a distance, with their long wooden shanks and their bodies propped in the air, like troops of giant cranes or herons. And ever as they went, and whether they went upon stilts or upon their own feet, or in flitting skerries, or in heavier and slower boats, these brave fenners sung in chorus the good songs which they had learned from the gleemen. In this wise the Lord of Brunn had a great force collected and in arms by the time of summer, when the waters had abated and the green fields were showing themselves, and the Normans were beginning to march, in the fantastic hope of encircling Hereward as hunters gird in a beast of prey. There were no traitors here, as at Ely, to show the short and safe ways across the fens; and Ivo Taille-Bois, the only Norman chief that could be said to know a little of the wild and difficult country, was a close prisoner in the house at Spalding, where he tried to beguile the tedium of his captivity by playing almost constantly at dice with the two Norman knights who had been captured with him in the marsh. Add to all this that the Normans, who had not before tried what it was to make war in the fens, had a contempt of their enemy, and a measureless confidence in their own skill and prowess, and it will be understood that their discomfiture was unavoidable. They came down from the upland country in separate bodies, and towards points far apart; and before they could place themselves, or contract their intended circle and give the hand to one another, Hereward attacked them separately, and beat them one by one. Nor did the Normans fare much better when they gave up their plan of circle and united their forces in one head. The Lord of Brunn, who had counted upon being driven from Spalding into the wilderness, found not only that he could maintain himself there, but that he could also hold his own good house at Brunn; for, when the Norman host marched upon that manor, they fell into an ambuscade he had laid for them, and suffered both loss and shame, and then fled from an enemy they had hardly seen; for the fenners had willow-trees for their shields, or they had bent their bows in the midst of the tall growing rushes. Thus passed the summer months; and Duke William[[255]] was still on the northern borders, fighting against Malcolm Caenmore; and as that Scots war became more and more obstinate, the Duke was compelled to call to his aid nearly the whole of his splendid chivalry, and almost every Norman foot-soldier that he could prudently withdraw from England. With such mighty forces Duke William marched from the left bank of the Tweed to end of the Frith of Forth, and all through the Lothians; and thereupon the Scots king, albeit he would not deliver up the Saxon nobles who had taken refuge at his court, came and agreed with Duke William, and delivered hostages, and promised to be his man. But by this time another year was spent, and the fens were again impracticable; and, moreover, the Norman conqueror was compelled to tarry long at Durham, in order to settle the North country. Before the quinzaine of this Nativity the goodly stock of Lord Hereward was increased by the birth of a daughter, and Elfric was a father. The two children were baptized on the same day; and at the feast, which was given in the same hall at Spalding wherein Ivo Taille-Bois and the Ladie Lucia had given their great feast for the christening of their first-born, the merry sword-bearer said, “Well, we be still here! and it is now my opinion that I shall be a grandfather before the Normans shall drive us out of the fens!” The carefully guarded Norman prisoners of rank and note were very sad; but Ivo Taille-Bois was the saddest of them all on this festal day, for his wife and child were far away from him, living under the protection of the primate Lanfranc at Canterbury, and, much as he had tried, he could get no news of them; nor could he see any prospect of regaining his liberty, inasmuch as the Lord of Brunn declared that he wanted not money, and was determined to keep him and his men as hostages.
With another year there came fresh preparation for invading the fen country, and giving the deathblow to Saxon liberty by destroying Hereward. But again the saints befriended the last of the Saxons, for great commotions burst out in Normandie, and in the county of Maine the people rose to a man against the tyrannies and oppressions of Duke William;[[256]] and thus the Conqueror was constrained to pass over into France with all the troops he could collect. Before he went he sent once more to offer a free pardon to the Lord of Brunn and a few of his adherents; but Hereward said that, in fighting for the liberties and old laws of his country, he had not done that which called for pardon: and as the terms proposed were otherwise inadmissible, the Lord of Brunn had rejected them all, and had told the proud Duke that he would yet trust to his sword, and to the brave fenners, and to the inexpungnable country he had so long occupied. Aided by many thousands of native English soldiers whom he carried over with him into Normandie and Maine, and who there fought most valorously for him, Duke William conquered the men of Maine and reduced them to his obedience. But this occupied him many months; and when he returned into England, it was to put down another insurrection and a wide-spread conspiracy, which were headed not by the Saxon nobles, but by Roger Fitz-Osborne, Raoul de Gael, and other nobles of Norman or French birth, who were not satisfied with the vast estates and high titles they had obtained in England, but wanted more, and had long been saying that William the Bastard was a tyrant in odium with all men, and that his death would gladden their hearts. Battles were fought and sieges were made before the Duke had triumphed over this confederacy; and while he was thus fighting and laying sieges, the Lord of Brunn reigned as a king in the fen country, and kept all the countries thereunto adjacent in a state of constant alarm. The herds and flocks of Hereward and his associates increased and multiplied the while; the drained and enclosed grounds gave their bountiful crops; the rivers and meres seemed more than ever to abound with fish and wild-fowl; and whatsoever else was wanted was supplied by successful forays to the upland countries and to the sea-coasts: so great was the plenty, that even the poor bondmen often ate wheaten bread—white loaves which might have been put upon the table of my Lord Abbat of Ely. The Ladie Alftrude and the wife of the sword-bearer were again mothers (so gracious were the saints unto them!); and Elfric’s first-born son was grown big enough to show a marvellous similitude to his father, specialiter about the laughing mouth and merry eyes.
Having nothing else upon hand for that present, William sent another great army to try their fortunes in the fen country; and (grieves me to say!) many of these soldiers were native English, and some few of them men from the Isle of Ely, who had experience in fen-warfare. Now was the manor-house of Brunn retaken, and now was Lord Hereward compelled to abandon Spalding, and to get him gone into the heart of Lincolnshire with his family and his people, and all his friends, and his Norman prisoners; but he drove off his cattle with him, and he found other herds where he went; and he found, moreover, subjugated townships and Norman town-governors unprepared to resist him. Some men do say that he had with him scant three hundred fighting men; but he flitted so rapidly from place to place, and so multiplied his attacks, that the Normans ever thought he had many thousands. And when the great Norman army marched against him in Lindsey in the north, Hereward doubled them, and marched back to the south into Kesteven; and when they came to look for him in Kesteven, either he was back in Lindsey, or continuing his course to the south, he got him into Hoiland and that flooded country near the Wash, where the Normans never could penetrate, and where every man that lived and went upon tall stilts was his liege man. Here, in Hoiland, and in perfect safety, chiefly abided the Ladie Alftrude, and the women and children, and the Norman prisoners. The name of the Lord of Brunn was more than ever sounded throughout broad England, and from the Wash to the Humber it was a name of dread to all Normans and friends of Normans. Every feat of arms or skilful stratagem inspired some new song or tale; and the gleemen were never idle, and were never unhonoured.