"Well, mother, and who art thou?" asked the justiciary, in a kindly tone, "and what hast thou to tell us in this matter?"
"I am Bertha," she replied, in tones singularly clear and distinct, "the wife of Werewulf, the son of Beowulf, who was henchman to Waltheof, who was the Lord of Waltheofstow, before the Normans came to England."
"A serf to testify in proof of a serf's liberty!" said William of Tichborne. "Such evidence may not stand."
"She is no serf, my lord," said Gourlay, "but as free as my brother of Tichborne. Let the Sheriff of Lancaster be sworn."
So, Sir Yvo de Taillebois being sworn in his place, testified: "Bertha, the wife of Werewulf, is a free woman. I bought her myself, with her own free consent, of my friend Sir Philip de Morville, and manumitted her, for reasons of mine own."
"Let Bertha proceed."
"I am the mother of seven sons, in lawful wedlock born; five of whom, and three grandsons, sleep with their fathers, in the kirkyard of Waltheofstow; two, as I believe, yet draw the breath of life, biding God's good time; 'Kenric the Dark,' my second born, and 'Eadwulf the Red,' my youngest. Kenric stands yonder, at the bar; Eadwulf is a wanderer on the moorland."
Being cross-examined; "Would she know her sons any where; would she know them apart?"
"Know my own sons!" she made answer; "the flesh of my own flesh, the bone of my own bone! By day or by night, in darkness or in light, by the lowest sound of the voice, by the least pressure of the hand, by the feeling of their hair, or the smell of their breath, would I know them, and know them apart, any where. Yon is Kenric, and Kenric is no more like to Eadwulf, than day is to darkness, or a bright summer sunshine to a thunder-cloud in autumn."
"Call Aradas de Ratcliffe."