Hereward, The Last of the English by Charles Kingsley (page 7)

and wide.

Earl Osbiorn shrunk back, appalled and trembling.

“Aha!” said Hereward without looking round. “I never thought there would be loose stones in the roof. Here! Up here, Vikings, Berserker, and sea-cocks all! Here, Jutlanders, Jomsburgers, Letts, Finns, witches’ sons and devils’ sons all! Here!” cried he, while Osbiorn profited by that moment to thrust an especially brilliant jewel into his boot. “Here is gold, here is the dwarfs work! Come up and take your Polotaswarf! You would not get a richer out of the Kaiser’s treasury. Here, wolves and ravens, eat gold, drink gold, roll in gold, and know that Hereward is a man of his word, and pays his soldiers’ wages royally!”

They rushed up the narrow stair, trampling each other to death, and thrust Hereward and the Earl, choking, into a corner. The room was so full for a few moments, that some died in it. Hereward and Osbiorn, protected by their strong armor, forced their way to the narrow window, and breathed through it, looking out upon the sea of flame below.

“That was an unlucky blow,” said Hereward, “that fell upon my head.”

“Very unlucky. I saw it coming, but had no time to warn you. Why do you hold my wrist?”

“Men’s daggers are apt to get loose at such times as these.”

“What do you mean?” and Earl Osbiorn went from him, and into the now thinning press. Soon only a few remained, to search, by the glare of the flames, for what their fellows might have overlooked.

“Now the play is played out,” said Hereward, “we may as well go down, and to our ships.”

Some drunken ruffians would have burnt the church for mere mischief. But Osbiorn, as well as Hereward, stopped that. And gradually they got the men down to the ships; some drunk, some struggling under plunder; some cursing and quarrelling because nothing had fallen to their lot. It was a hideous scene; but one to which Hereward, as well as Osbiorn, was too well accustomed to see aught in it save an hour’s inevitable trouble in getting the men on board.

The monks had all fled. Only Leofwin the Long was left, and he lay sick in the infirmary. Whether he was burned therein, or saved by Hereward’s men, is not told.

And so was the Golden Borough sacked and burnt. Now then, whither?

The Danes were to go to Ely and join the army there. Hereward would march on to Stamford; secure that town if he could; then to Huntingdon, to secure it likewise; and on to Ely afterwards.

“You will not leave me among these savages?” said Alftruda.

“Heaven forbid! You shall come with me as far as Stamford, and then I will set you on your way.”

“My way?” said Alftruda, in a bitter and hopeless tone.

Hereward mounted her on a good horse, and rode beside her, looking–and he well knew it–a very perfect knight. Soon they began to talk. What had brought Alftruda to Peterborough, of all places on earth?

“A woman’s fortune. Because I am rich,–and some say fair,–I am a puppet, and a slave, a prey. I was going back to my,–to Dolfin.”

“Have you been away from him, then?”

“What! Do you not know?”

“How should I know, lady?”

“Yes, most true. How should Hereward know anything about Alftruda? But I will tell you. Maybe you may not care to hear?”

“About you? Anything. I have often longed to know how,–what you were doing.”

“Is it possible? Is there one human being left on earth who cares to hear about Alftruda? Then listen. You know when Gospatrick fled to Scotland his sons went with him. Young Gospatrick, Waltheof, [Footnote: This Waltheof Gospatricksson must not be confounded with Waltheof Siwardsson, the young Earl. He became a wild border chieftain, then Baron of Atterdale, and then gave Atterdale to his sister Queen Ethelreda, and turned monk, and at last Abbot, of Crowland: crawling home, poor fellow, like many another, to die in peace in the sanctuary of the Danes.] and he,–Dolfin. Ethelreda, his girl, went too,–and she is to marry, they say, Duncan, Malcolm’s eldest son by Ingebiorg. So Gospatrick will find himself, some day, father-in-law of the King of Scots.”

“I will warrant him to find his nest well lined, wherever he be. But of yourself?”

“I refused to go. I could not face again that bleak black North. Beside–but that is no concern of Hereward’s–“

Hereward was on the point of saying, “Can anything concern you, and not be interesting to me?”

But she went on,–

“I refused, and–“

“And he misused you?” asked he, fiercely.

“Better if he had. Better if he had tied me to his stirrup, and scourged me along into Scotland, than have left me to new dangers and to old temptations.”

“What temptations?”

Alftruda did not answer; but went on,–

“He told me, in his lofty Scots’ fashion, that I was free to do what I list. That he had long since seen that I cared not for him; and that he would find many a fairer lady in his own land.”

“There he lied. So you did not care for him? He is a noble knight.”

“What is that to me? Women’s hearts are not to be bought and sold with their bodies, as I was sold. Care for him? I care for no creature upon earth. Once I cared for Hereward, like a silly child. Now I care not even for him.”

Hereward was sorry to hear that. Men are vainer than women, just as peacocks are vainer than peahens; and Hereward was–alas for him!–a specially vain man. Of course, for him to fall in love with Alftruda would have been a shameful sin,–he would not have committed it for all the treasures of Constantinople; but it was a not unpleasant thought that Alftruda should fall in love with him. But he only said, tenderly and courteously,–

“Alas, poor lady!”

“Poor lady. Too true, that last. For whither am I going now? Back to that man once more.”

“To Dolfin?”

“To my master, like a runaway slave. I went down south to Queen Matilda. I knew her well, and she was kind to me, as she is to all things that breathe. But now that Gospatrick is come into the king’s grace again, and has bought the earldom of Northumbria, from Tweed to Tyne–“

“Bought the earldom?”

“That has he; and paid for it right heavily.”

“Traitor and fool! He will not keep it seven years. The Frenchman will pick a quarrel with him, and cheat him out of earldom and money too.”

The which William did, within three years.

“May it be so! But when he came into the king’s grace, he must needs demand me back in his son’s name.”

“What does Dolfin want with you?”

“His father wants my money, and stipulated for it with the king. And beside, I suppose I am a pretty plaything enough still.”

“You? You are divine, perfect. Dolfin is right. How could a man who had once enjoyed you live without you?”

Alftruda laughed,–a laugh full of meaning; but what that meaning was, Hereward could not divine.

“So now,” she said, “what Hereward has to do, as a true and courteous knight, is to give Alftruda safe conduct, and, if he can, a guard; and to deliver her up loyally and knightly to his old friend and fellow-warrior, Dolfin Gospatricksson, earl of whatever he can lay hold of for the current month.”

“Are you in earnest?”

Alftruda laughed one of her strange laughs, looking straight before her. Indeed, she had never looked Hereward in the face during the whole ride.

“What are those open holes? Graves?”

“They are Barnack stone-quarries, which Alfgar my brother gave to Crowland.”

“So? That is pity. I thought they had been graves; and then you might have covered me up in one of them, and left me to sleep in peace.”

“What can I do for you, Alftruda, my old play-fellow: Alftruda, whom I saved from the bear?”

“If she had foreseen the second monster into whose jaws she was to fall, she would have prayed you to hold that terrible hand of yours, which never since, men say, has struck without victory and renown. You won your first honor for my sake. But who am I now, that you should turn out of your glorious path for me?”

“I will do anything,–anything. But why miscall this noble prince a monster?”

“If he were fairer than St. John, more wise than Solomon, and more valiant than King William, he is to me a monster; for I loathe him, and I know not why. But do your duty as a knight, sir. Convey the lawful wife to her lawful spouse.”

“What cares an outlaw for law, in a land where law is dead and gone? I will do what I–what you like. Come with me to Torfrida at Bourne; and let me see the man who dares try to take you out of my hand.”

Alftruda laughed again.

“No, no. I should interrupt the little doves in their nest. Beside, the billing and cooing might make me envious. And I, alas! who carry misery with me round the land, might make your Torfrida jealous.”

Hereward was of the same opinion, and rode silent and thoughtful through the great woods which are now the noble park of Burghley.

“I have found it!” said he at last. “Why not go to Gilbert of Ghent, at Lincoln?”

“Gilbert? Why should he befriend me?”

“He will do that, or anything else, which is for his own profit.”

“Profit? All the world seems determined to make profit out of me. I presume you would, if I had come with you to Bourne.”

“I do not doubt it. This is a very wild sea to swim in; and a man must be forgiven, if he catches at every bit of drift-timber.”

“Selfishness, selfishness everywhere;–and I suppose you expect to gain by sending me to Gilbert of Ghent?”

“I shall gain nothing, Alftruda, save the thought that you are not so far from me–from us–but that we can hear of you,–send succor to you if you need.”

Alftruda was silent. At last–

“And you think that Gilbert would not be afraid of angering the king?”

“He would not anger the king. Gilbert’s friendship is more important to William, at this moment, than that of a dozen Gospatricks. He holds Lincoln town, and with it the key of Waltheof’s earldom: and things may happen, Alftruda–I tell you; but if you tell Gilbert, may Hereward’s curse be on you!”

“Not that! Any man’s curse save yours!” said she in so passionate a voice that a thrill of fire ran through Hereward. And he recollected her scoff at Bruges,–“So he could not wait for me?” And a storm of evil thoughts swept through him. “Would to heaven!” said he to himself, crushing them gallantly down, “I had never thought of Lincoln. But there is no other plan.”

But he did not tell Alftruda, as he meant to do, that she might see him soon in Lincoln Castle as its conqueror and lord. He half hoped that when that day came, Alftruda might be somewhere else.

“Gilbert can say,” he went on, steadying himself again, “that you feared to go north on account of the disturbed state of the country; and that, as you had given yourself up to him of your own accord, he thought it wisest to detain you, as a hostage for Dolfin’s allegiance.”

“He shall say so. I will make him say so.”

“So be it, Now, here we are at Stamford town; and I must to my trade. Do you like to see fighting, Alftruda,–the man’s game, the royal game, the only game worth a thought on earth? For you are like to see a little in the next ten minutes.”

“I should like to see you fight. They tell me none is so swift and terrible in the battle as Hereward. How can you be otherwise, who slew the bear,–when we were two happy children together? But shall I be safe?”

“Safe? of course,” said Hereward, who longed, peacock-like, to show off his prowess before a lady who was–there was no denying it–far more beautiful than even Torfrida.

But he had no opportunity to show off his prowess. For as he galloped in over Stamford Bridge, Abbot Thorold galloped out at the opposite end of the town through Casterton, and up the Roman road to Grantham.

After whom Hereward sent Alftruda (for he heard that Thorold was going to Gilbert at Lincoln) with a guard of knights, bidding them do him no harm, but say that Hereward knew him to be a _preux chevalier_ and lover of fair ladies; that he had sent him a right fair one to bear him company to Lincoln, and hoped that he would sing to her on the way the song of Roland.

And Alftruda, who knew Thorold, went willingly, since it could no better be.

After which, according to Gaimar, Hereward tarried three days at Stamford, laying a heavy tribute on the burgesses for harboring Thorold and his Normans; and also surprised at a drinking-bout a certain special enemy of his, and chased him from room to room sword in hand, till he took refuge shamefully in an outhouse, and begged his life. And when his knights came back from Grantham, he marched to Bourne.

“The next night,” says Leofric the deacon, or rather the monk who paraphrased his saga in Latin prose,–“Hereward saw in his dreams a man standing by him of inestimable beauty, old of years, terrible of countenance, in all the raiment of his body more splendid than all things which he had ever seen, or conceived in his mind; who threatened him with a great club which he carried in his hand, and with a fearful doom, that he should take back to his church all that had been carried off the night before, and have them restored utterly, each in its place, if he wished to provide for the salvation of his soul, and escape on the spot a pitiable death. But when awakened, he was seized with a divine terror, and restored in the same hour all that he took away, and so departed, going onward with all his men.”

So says Leofric, wishing, as may be well believed, to advance the glory of St. Peter, and purge his master’s name from the stain of sacrilege. Beside, the monks of Peterborough, no doubt, had no wish that the world should spy out their nakedness, and become aware that the Golden Borough was stript of all its gold.

Nevertheless, truth will out. Golden Borough was Golden Borough no more. The treasures were never restored; they went to sea with the Danes, and were scattered far and wide,–to Norway, to Ireland, to Denmark; “all the spoils,” says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, “which reached the latter country, being the pallium and some of the shrines and crosses; and many of the other treasures they brought to one of the king’s towns, and laid them up in the church. But one night, through their carelessness and drunkenness, the church was burned, with all that was therein. Thus was the minster of Peterborough burned and pillaged. May Almighty God have pity on it in His great mercy.”

Hereward, when blamed for the deed, said always that he did it “because of his allegiance to the monastery.” Rather than that the treasures gathered by Danish monks should fall into the hands of the French robbers, let them be given to their own Danish kinsmen, in payment for their help to English liberty.

But some of the treasure, at least, he must have surely given back, it so appeased the angry shade of St. Peter. For on that night, when marching past Stamford, they lost their way. “To whom, when they had lost their way, a certain wonder happened, and a miracle, if it can be said that such would be worked in favor of men of blood. For while in the wild night and dark they wandered in the wood, a huge wolf met them, wagging his tail like a tame dog, and went before them on a path. And they, taking the gray beast in the darkness for a white dog, cheered on each other to follow him to his farm, which ought to be hard by. And in the silence of the midnight, that they might see their way, suddenly candles appeared, burning, and clinging to the lances of all the knights,–not very bright, however; but like those which the folk call _candelae nympharum_,–wills of the wisp. But none could pull them off, or altogether extinguish them, or throw them from their hands. And thus they saw their way, and went on, although astonished out of mind, with the wolf leading them, until day dawned, and they saw, to their great astonishment, that he was a wolf. And as they questioned among themselves about what had befallen, the wolf and the candles disappeared, and they came whither they had been minded,– beyond Stamford town,–thanking God, and wondering at what had happened.”

After which Hereward took Torfrida, and his child, and all he had, and took ship at Bardeney, and went for Ely. Which when Earl Warrenne heard, he laid wait for him, seemingly near Southery: but got nothing thereby, according to Leofric, but the pleasure of giving and taking a great deal of bad language; and (after his men had refused, reasonably enough, to swim the Ouse and attack Hereward) an arrow, which Hereward, “_modicum se inclinans_,” stooping forward, says Leofric,–who probably saw the deed,–shot at him across the Ouse, as the Earl stood cursing on the top of the dike. Which arrow flew so stout and strong, that though it sprang back from Earl Warrenne’s hauberk, it knocked him almost senseless off his horse, and forced him to defer his purpose of avenging Sir Frederic his brother.

After which Hereward threw himself into Ely, and assumed, by consent of all, the command of the English who were therein.

CHAPTER XXVII.

HOW THEY HELD A GREAT MEETING IN THE HALL OF ELY

There sat round the hall of Ely all the magnates of the East land and East sea. The Abbot on his high seat; and on a seat higher than his, prepared specially, Sweyn Ulfsson, King of Denmark and England. By them sat the Bishops, Egelwin the Englishman and Christiern the Dane; Osbiorn, the young Earls Edwin and Morcar, and Sweyn’s two sons; and, it may be, the sons of Tosti Godwinsson, and Arkill the great Thane, and Hereward himself. Below them were knights, Vikings, captains, great holders from Denmark, and the Prior and inferior officers of Ely minster. And at the bottom of the misty hall, on the other side of the column of blue vapor which went trembling up from the great heap of burning turf amidst, were housecarles, monks, wild men from the Baltic shores, crowded together to hear what was done in that parliament of their betters.

They spoke like free Danes; the betters from the upper end of the hall, but every man as he chose. They were in full Thing; in parliament, as their forefathers had been wont to be for countless ages. Their House of Lords and their House of Commons were not yet defined from each other: but they knew the rules of the house, the courtesies of debate; and, by practice of free speech, had educated themselves to bear and forbear, like gentlemen.

But the speaking was loud and earnest, often angry, that day. “What was to be done?” was the question before the house.

“That depended,” said Sweyn, the wise and prudent king, “on what could be done by the English to co-operate with them.” And what that was has been already told.

“When Tosti Godwinsson, ye Bishops, Earls, Knights, and Holders, came to me five years ago, and bade me come and take the kingdom of England, I answered him, that I had not wit enough to do the deeds which Canute my uncle did; and so sat still in peace. I little thought that I should have lost in five years so much of those small wits which I confessed to, that I should come after all to take England, and find two kings in it already, both more to the English mind than me. While William the Frenchman is king by the sword, and Edgar the Englishman king by proclamation of Danish Earls and Thanes, there seems no room here for Sweyn Ulfsson.”

“We will make room for you! We will make a rid road from here to Winchester!” shouted the holders and knights.

“It is too late. What say you, Hereward Leofricsson, who go for a wise man among men?”

Hereward rose, and spoke gracefully, earnestly, eloquently; but he could not deny Sweyn’s plain words.

“Sir Hereward beats about the bush,” said Earl Osbiorn, rising when Hereward sat down. “None knows better than he that all is over. Earl Edwin and Earl Morcar, who should have helped us along Watling Street, are here fugitives. Earl Gospatrick and Earl Waltheof are William’s men now, soon to raise the landsfolk against us. We had better go home, before we have eaten up the monks of Ely.”

Then Hereward rose again, and without an openly insulting word, poured forth his scorn and rage upon Osbiorn. Why had he not kept to the agreement which he and Countess Gyda had made with him through Tosti’s sons? Why had he wasted time and men from Dover to Norwich, instead of coming straight into the fens, and marching inland to succor Morcar and Edwin? Osbiorn had ruined the plan, and he only, if it was ruined.

“And who was I, to obey Hereward?” asked Osbiorn, fiercely.

“And who wert thou, to disobey me?” asked Sweyn, in a terrible voice. “Hereward is right. We shall see what thou sayest to all this, in full Thing at home in Denmark.”

Then Edwin rose, entreating peace. “They were beaten. The hand of God was against them. Why should they struggle any more? Or, if they struggled on, why should they involve the Danes in their own ruin?”

Then holder after holder rose, and spoke rough Danish common sense. They had come hither to win England. They had found it won already. Let them take what they had got from Peterborough, and go.

Then Winter sprang up. “Take the pay, and sail off with it, without having done the work? That would be a noble tale to carry home to your fair wives in Jutland. I shall not call you niddering, being a man of peace, as all know.” Whereat all laughed; for the doughty little man had not a hand’s breadth on head or arm without its scar. “But if your ladies call you so, you must have a shrewd answer to give, beside knocking them down.”

Sweyn spoke without rising: “The good knight forgets that this expedition has cost Denmark already nigh as much as Harold Hardraade’s cost Norway. It is hard upon the Danes, If they are to go away empty-handed as well as disappointed.”

“The King has right!” cried Hereward. “Let them take the plunder of Peterborough as pay for what they have done, and what beside they would have done if Osbiorn the Earl–Nay, men of England, let us be just!–what they would have done if there had been heart and wit, one mind and one purpose, in England. The Danes have done their best. They have shown themselves what they are, our blood and kin. I know that some talk of treason, of bribes. Let us have no more such vain and foul suspicions. They came as our friends; and as our friends let them go, and leave us to fight out our own quarrel to the last drop of blood.”

“Would God!” said Sweyn, “thou wouldest go too, thou good knight. Here, earls and gentlemen of England! Sweyn Ulfsson offers to every one of you, who will come to Denmark with him, shelter and hospitality till better times shall come.”

Then arose a mixed cry. Some would go, some would not. Some of the Danes took the proposal cordially; some feared bringing among themselves men who would needs want land, of which there was none to give. If the English came, they must go up the Baltic, and conquer fresh lands for themselves from heathen Letts and Finns.

Then Hereward rose again, and spoke so nobly and so well, that all ears were charmed.

They were Englishmen; and they would rather die in their own merry England than conquer new kingdoms in the cold northeast. They were sworn, the leaders of them, to die or conquer, fighting the accursed Frenchman. They were bound to St. Peter, and to St. Guthlac, and to St. Felix of Ramsey, and St. Etheldreda the holy virgin, beneath whose roof they stood, to defend against Frenchmen the saints of England whom they despised and blasphemed, whose servants they cast out, thrust into prison, and murdered, that they might bring in Frenchmen from Normandy, Italians from the Pope of Rome. Sweyn Ulfsson spoke as became him, as a prudent and a generous prince; the man who alone of all kings defied and fought the great Hardraade till neither could fight more; the true nephew of Canute the king of kings: and they thanked him: but they would live and die Englishmen.

And every Englishman shouted, “Hereward has right! We will live and die fighting the French!”

And Sweyn Ulfsson rose again, and said with a great oath, “That if there had been three such men as Hereward in England, all would have gone well.”

Hereward laughed. “Thou art wrong for once, wise king. We have failed, just because there were a dozen men in England as good as me, every man wanting his own way; and too many cooks have spoiled the broth. What we wanted is, not a dozen men like me, but one like thee, to take us all by the back of the neck and shake us soundly, and say, ‘Do that, or die!'”

And so, after much talk, the meeting broke up. And when it broke up, there came to Hereward in the hall a noble-looking man of his own age, and put his hand within his, and said,–

“Do you not know me, Hereward Leofricsson?”

“I know thee not, good knight, more pity; but by thy dress and carriage, thou shouldest be a true Viking’s son.”

“I am Sigtryg Ranaldsson, now King of Waterford. And my wife said to me, ‘If there be treachery or faint-heartedness, remember this,–that Hereward Leofricsson slew the Ogre, and Hannibal of Gweek likewise, and brought me safe to thee. And, therefore, if thou provest false to him, niddering thou art; and no niddering is spouse of mine.'”

“Thou art Sigtryg Ranaldsson?” cried Hereward, clasping him in his arms, as the scenes of his wild youth rushed across his mind. “Better is old wine than new, and old friends likewise.”

“And I, and my five ships, are thine to death. Let who will go back.”

“They must go,” said Hereward, half-peevishly. “Sweyn has right, and Osbiorn too. The game is played out. Sweep the chessmen off the board, as Earl Ulf did by Canute the king.”

“And lost his life thereby. I shall stand by, and see thee play the last pawn.”

“And lose thy life equally.”

“What matter? I heard thee sing,–

‘A bed-death, a priest death,
A straw death, a cow death,
Such death likes not me!’

Nor likes it me either, Hereward Leofricsson.”

So the Danes sailed away: but Sigtryg Ranaldsson and his five ships remained.

Hereward went to the minster tower, and watched the Ouse flashing with countless oars northward toward Southrey Fen. And when they were all out of sight, he went back, and lay down on his bed and wept,–once and for all. Then he arose, and went down into the hall to abbots and monks, and earls and knights, and was the boldest, cheeriest, wittiest of them all.

“They say,” quoth he to Torfrida that night, “that some men have gray heads on green shoulders. I have a gray heart in a green body.”

“And my heart is growing very gray, too,” said Torfrida.

“Certainly not thy head.” And he played with her raven locks.

“That may come, too; and too soon.”

For, indeed, they were in very evil case.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

HOW THEY FOUGHT AT ALDRETH.

When William heard that the Danes were gone, he marched on Ely, as on an easy prey.

Ivo Taillebois came with him, hungry after those Spalding lands, the rents whereof Hereward had been taking for his men for now twelve months. William de Warrenne was there, vowed to revenge the death of Sir Frederic, his brother. Ralph Guader was there, flushed with his success at Norwich. And with them all the Frenchmen of the east, who had been either expelled from their lands, or were in fear of expulsion.

With them, too, was a great army of mercenaries, ruffians from all France and Flanders, hired to fight for a certain term, on the chance of plunder or of fiefs in land. Their brains were all aflame with the tales of inestimable riches hidden in Ely. There were there the jewels of all the monasteries round; there were the treasures of all the fugitive English nobles; there were there–what was there not? And they grumbled, when William halted them and hutted them at Cambridge, and began to feel cautiously the strength of the place,–which must be strong, or Hereward and the English would not have made it their camp of refuge.

Perhaps he rode up to Madingley windmill, and saw fifteen miles away, clear against the sky, the long line of what seemed naught but a low upland park, with the minster tower among the trees; and between him and them, a rich champaign of grass, over which it was easy enough to march all the armies of Europe; and thought Ely an easy place to take. But men told him that between him and those trees lay a black abyss of mud and peat and reeds, Haddenham fen and Smithy fen, with the deep sullen West water or “Ald-reche” of the Ouse winding through them. The old Roman road was sunk and gone long since under the bog, whether by English neglect, or whether (as some think) by actual and bodily sinking of the whole land. The narrowest space between dry land and dry land was a full half-mile; and how to cross that half-mile, no man knew.

What were the approaches on the west? There were none. Beyond Earith, where now run the great washes of the Bedford Level, was a howling wilderness of meres, seas, reed-ronds, and floating alder-beds, through which only the fen-men wandered, with leaping-pole and log canoe.

What in the east? The dry land neared the island on that side. And it may be that William rowed round by Burwell to Fordham and Soham, and thought of attempting the island by way of Barraway, and saw beneath him a labyrinth of islands, meres, fens, with the Ouse, now increased by the volume of the Cam, lying deep and broad between Barraway and Thetford-in-the-Isle; and saw, too, that a disaster in that labyrinth might be a destruction.

So he determined on the near and straight path, through Long Stratton and Willingham, down the old bridle-way from Willingham ploughed field,–every village there, and in the isle likewise, had and has still its “field,” or ancient clearing of ploughed land,–and then to try that terrible half-mile, with the courage and wit of a general to whom human lives were as those of the gnats under the hedge.

So all his host camped themselves in Willingham field, by the old earthwork which men now call Belsar’s Hills; and down the bridle-way poured countless men, bearing timber and fagots cut from all the hills, that they might bridge the black half-mile.

They made a narrow, firm path through the reeds, and down to the brink of the Ouse, if brink it could be called, where the water, rising and falling a foot or two each tide, covered the floating peat for many yards before it sunk into a brown depth of bottomless slime. They would make a bottom for themselves by driving piles.

The piles would not hold; and they began to make a floating bridge with long beams, says Leofric, and blown-up cattle-hides to float them.

Soon they made a floating sow, and thrust it on before them as they worked across the stream; for they were getting under shot from the island.

Meanwhile the besieged had not been idle. They had thrown up, says Leofric, a turf rampart on the island shore, and _antemuralia et propugnacula,_–doubtless overhanging “hoardings,” or scaffolds, through the floor of which they could shower down missiles. And so they awaited the attack, contenting themselves with gliding in and out of the reeds in their canoes, and annoying the builders with arrows and cross-bow bolts.

At last the bridge was finished, and the sow safe across the West water, and thrust in, as far as it would float, among the reeds on the high tide. They in the fort could touch it with a pole.

The English would have destroyed it if they could. But Hereward bade them leave it alone. He had watched all their work, and made up his mind to the event.

“The rats have set a trap for themselves,” he said to his men, “and we shall be fools to break it up till the rats are safe inside.”

So there the huge sow lay, black and silent, showing nothing to the enemy but a side of strong plank, covered with hide to prevent its being burned. It lay there for three hours, and Hereward let it lie.

He had never been so cheerful, so confident. “Play the man this day, every one of you, and ere nightfall you will have taught the Norman once more the lesson of York. He seems to have forgotten that. It is me to remind him of it.”

And he looked to his bow and to his arrows, and prepared to play the man himself,–as was the fashion in those old days, when a general proved his worth by hitting harder and more surely than any of his men.

At last the army was in motion, and Willingham field opposite was like a crawling ants’ nest. Brigade after brigade moved down to the reed beds, and the assault began.

And now advanced along the causeway and along the bridge a dark column of men, surmounted by glittering steel. Knights in complete mail, footmen in leather coats and quilted jerkins; at first orderly enough, each under the banner of his lord; but more and more mingled and crowded as they hurried forward, each eager for his selfish share of the inestimable treasures of Ely. They pushed along the bridge. The mass became more and more crowded; men stumbled over each other, and fell off into the mire and the water, calling vainly for help, while their comrades hurried on unheeding, in the mad thirst for spoil.

On they came in thousands; and fresh thousands streamed out of the fields, as if the whole army intended to pour itself into the isle at once.

“They are numberless,” said Torfrida, in a serious and astonished voice, as she stood by Hereward’s side.

“Would they were!” said Hereward. “Let them come on, thick and threefold. The more their numbers the fatter will the fish below be before to-morrow morning. Look there, already!”

And already the bridge was swaying, and sinking beneath their weight. The men in places were ankle deep in water. They rushed on all the more eagerly, and filled the sow, and swarmed up to its roof.

Then, what with its own weight, what with the weight of the laden bridge,–which dragged upon it from behind,–the huge sow began to tilt backwards, and slide down the slimy bank.

The men on the top tried vainly to keep their footing, to hurl grapnels into the rampart, to shoot off their quarrels and arrows.

“You must be quick, Frenchmen,” shouted Hereward in derision, “if you mean to come on board here.”

The Normans knew that well; and as Hereward spoke two panels in the front of the sow creaked on their hinges, and dropped landward, forming two draw-bridges, over which reeled to the attack a close body of knights, mingled with soldiers bearing scaling ladders.

They recoiled. Between the ends of the draw-bridges and the foot of the rampart was some two fathoms’ depth of black ooze. The catastrophe which Hereward had foreseen was come, and a shout of derision arose from the unseen defenders above.

“Come on,–leap it like men! Send back for your horses, knights, and ride them at it like bold huntsmen!”

The front rank could not but rush on: for the pressure behind forced them forward, whether they would or not. In a moment they were wallowing waist deep, trampled on, and disappearing under their struggling comrades, who disappeared in their turn.

“Look, Torfrida! If they plant their scaling ladders, it will be on a foundation of their comrades’ corpses.”

Torfrida gave one glance through the openings of the hoarding, upon the writhing mass below, and turned away in horror. The men were not so merciful. Down between the hoarding-beams rained stones, javelins, arrows, increasing the agony and death. The scaling ladders would not stand in the mire. If they had stood a moment, the struggles of the dying would have thrown them down; and still fresh victims pressed on from behind, shouting “Dex Aie! On to the gold of Ely!” And still the sow, under the weight, slipped further and further back into the stream, and the foul gulf widened between besiegers and besieged.

At last one scaling ladder was planted upon the bodies of the dead, and hooked firmly on the gunwale of the hoarding. Ere it could be hurled off again by the English, it was so crowded with men that even Hereward’s strength was insufficient to lift it off. He stood at the top, ready to hew down the first comer; and he hewed him down.

But the Normans were not to be daunted. Man after man dropped dead from the ladder top,–man after man took his place; sometimes two at a time; sometimes scrambling over each other’s backs.

The English, even in the insolence of victory, cheered them with honest admiration. “You are fellows worth fighting, you French!”

“So we are,” shouted a knight, the first and last who crossed that parapet; for, thrusting Hereward back with a blow of his sword-hilt, he staggered past him over the hoarding, and fell on his knees.

A dozen men were upon him; but he was up again and shouting,–

“To me, men-at-arms! A Dade! a Dade!” But no man answered.

“Yield!” quoth Hereward.

Sir Dade answered by a blow on Hereward’s helmet, which felled the chief to his knees, and broke the sword into twenty splinters.

“Well hit,” said Hereward, as he rose. “Don’t touch him, men! this is my quarrel now. Yield, sir! you have done enough for your honor. It is madness to throw away your life.”

The knight looked round on the fierce ring of faces, in the midst of which he stood alone.

“To none but Hereward.”

“Hereward am I.”

“Ah,” said the knight, “had I but hit a little harder!”

“You would have broke your sword into more splinters. My armor is enchanted. So yield like a reasonable and valiant man.”

“What care I?” said the knight, stepping on to the earthwork, and sitting down quietly. “I vowed to St. Mary and King William that into Ely I would get this day; and in Ely I am; so I have done my work.”

“And now you shall taste–as such a gallant knight deserves–the hospitality of Ely.”

It was Torfrida who spoke.

“My husband’s prisoners are mine; and I, when I find them such _prudhommes_ as you are, have no lighter chains for them than that which a lady’s bower can afford.”

Sir Dade was going to make an equally courteous answer, when over and above the shouts and curses of the combatants rose a yell so keen, so dreadful, as made all hurry forward to the rampart.

That which Hereward had foreseen was come at last. The bridge, strained more and more by its living burden, and by the falling tide, had parted,–not at the Ely end, where the sliding of the sow took off the pressure,–but at the end nearest the camp. One sideway roll it gave, and then, turning over, engulfed in that foul stream the flower of Norman chivalry; leaving a line–a full quarter of a mile in length–of wretches drowning in the dark water, or, more hideous still, in the bottomless slime of peat and mud.

Thousands are said to have perished. Their armor and weapons were found at times, by delvers and dikers, for centuries after; are found at times unto this day, beneath the rich drained cornfields which now fill up that black half-mile, or in the bed of the narrow brook to which the Westwater, robbed of its streams by the Bedford Level, has dwindled down at last.

William, they say, struck his tents and departed forthwith, “groaning from deep grief of heart;” and so ended the first battle of Aldreth.

CHAPTER XXIX.

HOW SIR DADE BROUGHT NEWS FROM ELY.

A month after the fight, there came into the camp at Cambridge, riding on a good horse, himself fat and well-liking, none other than Sir Dade.

Boisterously he was received, as one alive from the dead; and questioned as to his adventures and sufferings.

“Adventures I have had, and strange ones; but for sufferings, instead of fetter-galls, I bring back, as you see, a new suit of clothes; instead of an empty and starved stomach, a surfeit from good victuals and good liquor; and whereas I went into Ely on foot, I came out on a fast hackney.”

So into William’s tent he went; and there he told his tale.

“So, Dade, my friend?” quoth the Duke, in high good humor, for he loved Dade, “you seem to have been in good company?”

“Never in better, Sire, save in your presence. Of the earls and knights in Ely, all I can say is, God’s pity that they are rebels, for more gallant and courteous knights or more perfect warriors never saw I, neither in Normandy nor at Constantinople, among the Varangers themselves.”

“Eh! and what are the names of these gallants; for you have used your eyes and ears, of course?”

“Edwin and Morcar, the earls,–two fine young lads.”

“I know it. Go on”; and a shade passed over William’s brow, as he thought of his own falsehood, and his fair Constance, weeping in vain for the fair bridegroom whom he had promised to her.

“Siward Barn, as they call him, the boy Orgar, and Thurkill Barn. Those are the knights. Egelwin, bishop of Durham, is there too; and besides them all, and above them all, Hereward. The like of that knight I may have seen. His better saw I never.”

“Sir fool!” said Earl Warrenne, who had not yet–small blame to him–forgotten his brother’s death. “They have soused thy brains with their muddy ale, till thou knowest not friend from foe. What! hast thou to come hither praising up to the King’s Majesty such an outlawed villain as that, with whom no honest knight would keep company?”

“If you, Earl Warrenne, ever found Dade drunk or lying, it is more than the King here has done.”

“Let him speak, Earl,” said William. “I have not an honester man in my camp; and he speaks for my information, not for yours.”

“Then for yours will I speak, Sir King. These men treated me knightly, and sent me away without ransom.”

“They had an eye to their own profit, it seems,” grumbled the Earl.

“But force me they did to swear on the holy Gospels that I should tell your Majesty the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And I keep my oath,” quoth Dade.

“Go on, then, without fear or favor. Are there any other men of note in the island!”

“No.”

“Are they in want of provisions?”

“Look how they have fattened me.”

“What do they complain of?”

“I will tell you, Sir King. The monks, like many more, took fright at the coming over of our French men of God to set right all their filthy, barbarous ways; and that is why they threw Ely open to the rebels.”

“I will be even with the sots,” quoth William.

“However, they think that danger blown over just now; for they have a story among them, which, as my Lord the King never heard before, he may as well hear now.”

“Eh?”

“How your Majesty should have sent across the sea a whole shipload of French monks.”

“That have I, and will more, till I reduce these swine into something like obedience to his Holiness of Rome.”

“Ah, but your Majesty has not heard how one Bruman, a valiant English knight, was sailing on the sea and caught those monks. Whereon he tied a great sack to the ship’s head, and cut the bottom out, and made every one of those monks get into that sack and so fall through into the sea; whereby he rid the monks of Ely of their rivals.”

“Pish! why tell me such an old-wives’ fable, knight?”

“Because the monks believe that old-wives’ fable, and are stout-hearted and stiff-necked accordingly.”

“The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church,” said William’s chaplain, a pupil and friend of Lanfranc; “and if these men of Belial drowned every man of God in Normandy, ten would spring up in their places to convert this benighted and besotted land of Simonites and Balaamites, whose priests, like the brutes which perish, scruple not to defile themselves and the service of the altar with things which they impudently call their wives.”

“We know that, good chaplain,” quoth William, impatiently. He had enough of that language from Lanfranc himself; and, moreover, was thinking more of the Isle of Ely than of the celibacy of the clergy.

“Well, Sir Dade?”

“So they have got together all their kin; for among these monks every one is kin to a Thane, or Knight, or even an Earl. And there they are, brother by brother, cousin by cousin, knee to knee, and back to back, like a pack of wolves, and that in a hold which you will not enter yet awhile.”

“Does my friend Dade doubt his Duke’s skill at last?”

“Sir Duke,–Sir King I mean now, for King you are and deserve to be,–I know what you can do. I remember how we took England at one blow on Senlac field; but see you here, Sir King. How will you take an island where four kings such as you (if the world would hold four such at once) could not stop one churl from ploughing the land, or one bird-catcher from setting lime-twigs?”

“And what if I cannot stop the bird-catchers? Do they expect to lime Frenchmen as easily as sparrows?”

“Sparrows! It is not sparrows that I have been fattening on this last month. I tell you, Sire, I have seen wild-fowl alone in that island enough to feed them all the year round. I was there in the moulting-time, and saw them take,–one day one hundred, one two hundred; and once, as I am a belted knight, a thousand duck out of one single mere. There is a wood there, with herons sprawling about the tree-tops,–I did not think there were so many in the world,–and fish for Lent and Fridays in every puddle and leat, pike and perch, tench and eels, on every old-wife’s table; while the knights think scorn of anything worse than smelts and burbot.”

“Splendeur Dex!” quoth William, who, Norman-like, did not dislike a good dinner. “I must keep Lent in Ely before I die.”

“Then you had best make peace with the burbot-eating knights, my lord.”

“But have they flesh-meat?”

“The isle is half of it a garden,–richer land, they say, is none in these realms, and I believe it; but, besides that, there is a deer-park there with a thousand head in it, red and fallow; and plenty of swine in woods, and sheep, and cattle; and if they fail, there are plenty more to be got, they know where.”

“They know where? Do you, Sir Knight?” asked William, keenly.

“Out of every little Island in their fens, for forty miles on end. There are the herds fattening themselves on the richest pastures in the land, and no man needing to herd them, for they are all safe among dikes and meres.”

“I will make my boats sweep their fens clear of every head–“

“Take care, my Lord King, lest never a boat come back from that errand. With their narrow flat-bottomed punts, cut out of a single log, and their leaping-poles, wherewith they fly over dikes of thirty feet in width,–they can ambuscade in those reed-beds and alder-beds, kill whom they will, and then flee away through the marsh like so many horse-flies. And if not, one trick have they left, which they never try save when driven into a corner; but from that, may all saints save us!”

“What then?”

“Firing the reeds.”

“And destroying their own cover?”

“True: therefore they will only do it in despair.”

“Then to despair will I drive them, and try their worst. So these monks are as stout rebels as the earls?”

“I only say what I saw. At the hall-table there dined each day maybe some fifty belted knights, with every one a monk next to him; and at the high table the abbot, and the three earls, and Hereward and his lady, and Thurkill Barn. And behind each knight, and each monk likewise, hung against the wall lance and shield, helmet and hauberk, sword and axe.”

“To monk as well as knight?”

“As I am a knight myself; and were as well used, too, for aught I saw. The monks took turns with the knights as sentries, and as foragers, too; and the knights themselves told me openly, the monks were as good men as they.”

“As wicked, you mean,” groaned the chaplain. “O, accursed and bloodthirsty race, why does not the earth open and swallow you, with Korah, Dathan, and Abiram?”

“They would not mind,” quoth Dade. “They are born and bred in the bottomless pit already. They would jump over, or flounder out, as they do to their own bogs every day.”

“You speak irreverently, my friend,” quoth William.

“Ask those who are in camp, and not me. As for whither they went, or how, the English were not likely to tell me. All I know is, that I saw fresh cattle come every few days, and fresh farms burnt, too, on the Norfolk side. There were farms burning last night only, between here and Cambridge. Ask your sentinels on the Rech-dike how that came about!”

“I can answer that,” quoth a voice from the other end of the tent. “I was on the Rech-dike last night, close down to the fen,–worse luck and shame for me.”

“Answer, then!” quoth William, with one of his horrible oaths, glad to have some one on whom he could turn his rage and disappointment.

“There came seven men in a boat up from Ely yestereven, and five of them were monks; they came up from Burwell fen, and plundered and burnt Burwell town.”

“And where were all you mighty men of war?”

“Ten of us ran down to stop them, with Richard, Earl Osbern’s nephew, at their head. The villains got to the top of the Rech-dike, and made a stand, and before we could get to them–“

“Thy men had run, of course.”

“They were every one dead or wounded, save Richard; and he was fighting single-handed with an Englishman, while the other six stood around, and looked on.”

“Then they fought fairly?” said William.

“As fairly, to do them justice, as if they had been Frenchmen, and not English churls. As we came down along the dike, a little man of them steps between the two, and strikes down their swords as if they had been two reeds. ‘Come!’ cries he, ‘enough of this. You are two _prudhommes_ well matched, and you can fight out this any other day’; and away he and his men go down the dike-end to the water.”

“Leaving Richard safe?”

“Wounded a little,–but safe enough.”

“And then?”

“We followed them to the boat as hard as we could; killed one with a javelin, and caught another.”

“Knightly done!” and William swore an awful oath, “and worthy of valiant Frenchmen. These English set you the example of chivalry by letting your comrade fight his own battle fairly, instead of setting on him all together; and you repay them by hunting them down with darts, because you dare not go within sword’s-stroke of better men than yourselves. Go. I am ashamed of you. No, stay. Where is your prisoner? For, Splendeur Dex! I will send him back safe and sound in return for Dade, to tell the knights of Ely that if they know so well the courtesies of war, William of Rouen does too.”

“The prisoner, Sire,” quoth the knight, trembling, “is–is–“

“You have not murdered him?”

“Heaven forbid! but–“

“He broke his bonds and escaped?”

“Gnawed them through, Sire, as we suppose, and escaped through the mire in the dark, after the fashion of these accursed frogs of Girvians.”

“But did he tell you naught ere he bade you good morning?”

“He told as the names of all the seven. He that beat down the swords was Hereward himself.”

“I thought as much. When shall I have that fellow at my side?”

“He that fought Richard was one Wenoch.”

“I have heard of him.”

“He that we slew was Siward, a monk.”

“More shame to you.”

“He that we took was Azer the Hardy, a monk of Nicole–Licole,”–the Normans could never say Lincoln.

“And the rest were Thurstan the Younger; Leofric the Deacon, Hereward’s minstrel; and Boter, the traitor monk of St. Edmund’s.”

“And if I catch them,” quoth William, “I will make an abbot of every one of them.”

“Sire?” quoth the chaplain, in a deprecating tone.

CHAPTER XXX.

HOW HEREWARD PLAYED THE POTTER; AND HOW HE CHEATED THE KING.

They of Ely were now much straitened, being shut in both by land and water; and what was to be done, either by themselves or by the king, they knew not. Would William simply starve them; or at least inflict on them so perpetual a Lent,–for of fish there could be no lack, even if they ate or drove away all the fowl,–as would tame down their proud spirits; which a diet of fish and vegetables, from some ludicrous theory of monastic physicians, was supposed to do? [Footnote: The Cornish–the stoutest, tallest, and most prolific race of the South–live on hardly anything else but fish and vegetables.] Or was he gathering vast armies, from they knew not whence, to try, once and for all, another assault on the island,–it might be from several points at once?

They must send out a spy, and find out news from the outer world, if news were to be gotten. But who would go?

So asked the bishop, and the abbot, and the earls, in council in the abbot’s lodging.

Torfrida was among them. She was always among them now. She was their Alruna-wife, their Vala, their wise woman, whose counsels all received as more than human.

“I will go,” said she, rising up like a goddess on Olympus. “I will cut off my hair, and put on boy’s clothes, and smirch myself brown with walnut leaves; and I will go. I can talk their French tongue. I know their French ways; and as for a story to cover my journey and my doings, trust a woman’s wit to invent that.”

They looked at her, with delight in her courage, but with doubt.

“If William’s French grooms got hold of you, Torfrida, it would not be a little walnut brown which would hide you,” said Hereward. “It is like you to offer,–worthy of you, who have no peer.”

“That she has not,” quoth churchmen and soldiers alike.

“But–to send you would be to send Hereward’s wrong half. The right half of Hereward is going; and that is, himself.”

“Uncle, uncle!” said the young earls, “send Winter, Geri, Leofwin Prat, any of your fellows: but not yourself. If we lose you, we lose our head and our king.”

And all prayed Hereward to let any man go, rather than himself.

“I am going, lords and knights; and what Hereward says he does. It is one day to Brandon. It may be two days back; for if I miscarry,–as I most likely shall,–I must come home round about. On the fourth day, you shall hear of me or from me. Come with me, Torfrida.”

And he strode out.

He cropped his golden locks, he cropped his golden beard; and Torfrida cried, as she cropped them, half with fear for him, half for sorrow over his shorn glories.

“I am no Samson, my lady; my strength lieth not in my locks. Now for some rascal’s clothes,–as little dirty as you can get me, for fear of company.”

And Hereward put on filthy garments, and taking mare Swallow with him, got into a barge and went across the river to Soham.

He could not go down the Great Ouse, and up the Little Ouse, which was his easiest way, for the French held all the river below the isle; and, beside, to have come straight from Ely might cause suspicion. So he went down to Fordham, and crossed the Lark at Mildenhall; and just before he got to Mildenhall, he met a potter carrying pots upon a pony.

“Halt, my stout fellow,” quoth he, “and put thy pots on my mare’s back.”

“The man who wants them must fight for them,” quoth that stout churl, raising a heavy staff.

“Then here is he that will,” quoth Hereward; and, jumping off his mare, he twisted the staff out of the potter’s hands, and knocked him down therewith.

“That will teach thee to know an Englishman when thou seest him.”

“I have met my master,” quoth the churl, rubbing his head. “But dog does not eat dog; and it is hard to be robbed by an Englishman, after being robbed a dozen times by the French.”

“I will not rob thee. There is a silver penny for thy pots and thy coat,–for that I must have likewise. And if thou tellest to mortal man aught about this, I will find those who will cut thee to ribbons; and if not, then turn thy horse’s head and ride back to Ely, if thou canst cross the water, and say what has befallen thee; and thou wilt find there an abbot who will give thee another penny for thy news.”

So Hereward took the pots, and the potter’s clay-greased coat, and went on through Mildenhall, “crying,” saith the chronicler, “after the manner of potters, in the English tongue, ‘Pots! pots! good pots and pans!'”

But when he got through Mildenhall, and well into the rabbit-warrens, he gave mare Swallow a kick, and went over the heath so fast northward, that his pots danced such a dance as broke half of them before he got to Brandon.

“Never mind,” quoth he, “they will think that I have sold them.” And when he neared Brandon he pulled up, sorted his pots, kept the whole ones, threw the sherds at the rabbits, and walked on into Brandon solemnly, leading the mare, and crying “Pots!”

So “semper marcida et deformis aspectu”–lean and ill-looking–was that famous mare, says the chronicler, that no one would suspect her splendid powers, or take her for anything but a potter’s nag, when she was caparisoned in proper character. Hereward felt thoroughly at home in his part; as able to play the Englishman which he was by rearing, as the Frenchman which he was by education. He was full of heart, and happy. He enjoyed the keen fresh air of the warrens; he enjoyed the ramble out of the isle, in which he had been cooped up so long; he enjoyed the fun of the thing,–disguise, stratagem, adventure, danger. And so did the English, who adored him. None of Hereward’s deeds is told so carefully and lovingly; and none, doubt it not, was so often sung in after years by farm-house hearths, or in the outlaws’ lodge, as this. Robin Hood himself may have trolled out many a time, in doggrel strain, how Hereward played the potter.

And he came to Brandon, to the “king’s court,”–probably Weeting Hall, or castle, from which William could command the streams of Wissey and Little Ouse, with all their fens,–and cast about for a night’s lodging, for it was dark.

Outside the town was a wretched cabin of mud and turf,–such a one as Irish folk live in to this day; and Hereward said to himself, “This is bad enough to be good enough for me.”

So he knocked at the door, and knocked till it was opened, and a hideous old crone put out her head.

“Who wants to see me at this time of night?”

“Any one would, who had heard how beautiful you are. Do you want any pots?”

“Pots! What have I to do with pots, thou saucy fellow? I thought it was some one wanting a charm.” And she shut the door.

“A charm?” thought Hereward. “Maybe she can tell me news, if she be a witch. They are shrewd souls, these witches, and know more than they tell. But if I can get any news, I care not if Satan brings it in person.”

So he knocked again, till the old woman looked out once more, and bade him angrily be off.

“But I am belated here, good dame, and afraid of the French. And I will give thee the best bit of clay on my mare’s back,–pot,–pan,–pansion,– crock,–jug, or what thou wilt, for a night’s lodging.”

“Have you any little jars,–jars no longer than my hand?” asked she; for she used them in her trade, and had broken one of late: but to pay for one, she had neither money nor mind. So she agreed to let Hereward sleep there, for the value of two jars. “But what of that ugly brute of a horse of thine?”

“She will do well enough in the turf-shed.”

“Then thou must pay with a pannikin.”

“Ugh!” groaned Hereward; “thou drivest a hard bargain, for an Englishwoman, with a poor Englishman.”

“How knowest thou that I am English?”

“So much the better if thou art not,” thought Hereward; and bargained with her for a pannikin against a lodging for the horse in the turf-house, and a bottle of bad hay.

Then he went in, bringing his panniers with him with ostentatious care.

“Thou canst sleep there on the rushes. I have naught to give thee to eat.”

“Naught needs naught,” said Hereward; threw himself down on a bundle of rush, and in a few minutes snored loudly.

But he was never less asleep. He looked round the whole cabin; and he listened to every word.

The Devil, as usual, was a bad paymaster; for the witch’s cabin seemed only somewhat more miserable than that of other old women. The floor was mud, the rafters unceiled; the stars shone through the turf roof. The only hint of her trade was a hanging shelf, on which stood five or six little earthen jars, and a few packets of leaves. A parchment, scrawled with characters which the owner herself probably did not understand, hung against the cob wall; and a human skull–probably used only to frighten her patients–dangled from the roof-tree.

But in a corner, stuck against the wall, was something which chilled Hereward’s blood a little. A dried human hand, which he knew must have been stolen off the gallows, gripping in its fleshless fingers a candle, which he knew was made of human fat. That candle, he knew, duly lighted and carried, would enable the witch to walk unseen into any house on earth, yea, through the court of King William himself, while it drowned all men in preternatural slumber.

Hereward was very much frightened. He believed as devoutly in the powers of a witch as did then–and does now, for aught Italian literature, _e permissu superiorum_, shows–the Pope of Rome.

So he trembled on his rushes, and wished himself safe through that adventure, without being turned into a hare or a wolf.

“I would sooner be a wolf than a hare, of course, killing being more in my trade than being killed; but–who comes here?”

And to the first old crone, who sat winking her bleared eyes, and warming her bleared hands over a little heap of peat in the middle of the cabin, entered another crone, if possible uglier.

“Two of them! If I am not roasted and eaten this night, I am a lucky man.”

And Hereward crossed himself devoutly, and invoked St. Ethelfrida of Ely, St. Guthlac of Crowland, St. Felix of Ramsey,–to whom, he recollected, he had been somewhat remiss; but, above all, St. Peter of Peterborough, whose treasures he had given to the Danes. And he argued stoutly with St. Peter and with his own conscience, that the means sanctify the end, and that he had done it all for the best.

“If thou wilt help me out of this strait, and the rest, blessed Apostle, I will give thee–I will go to Constantinople but what I will win it–a golden table twice as fine as those villains carried off, and one of the Bourne manors–Witham–or Toft–or Mainthorpe–whichever pleases thee best, in full fee; and a–and a–“

But while Hereward was casting in his mind what gewgaw further might suffice to appease the Apostle, he was recalled to business and common-sense by hearing the two old hags talk to each other in French.

His heart leapt for joy, and he forgot St. Peter utterly.

“Well, how have you sped? Have you seen the king?”

“No; but Ivo Taillebois. Eh! Who the foul fiend have you lying there?”

“Only an English brute. He cannot understand us. Talk on: only don’t wake the hog. Have you got the gold?”

“Never mind.”

Then there was a grumbling and a quarrelling, from which Hereward understood that the gold was to be shared between them.

“But it is a bit of chain. To cut it will spoil it.”

The other insisted; and he heard them chop the gold chain in two.

“And is this all?”

“I had work enough to get that. He said, No play no pay; and he would give it me after the isle was taken. But I told him my spirit was a Jewish spirit, that used to serve Solomon the Wise; and he would not serve me, much less come over the sea from Normandy, unless he smelt gold; for he loved it like any Jew.”

“And what did you tell him then?”

“That the king must go back to Aldreth again; for only from thence he would take the isle; for–and that was true enough–I dreamt I saw all the water of Aldreth full of wolves, clambering over into the island on each other’s backs.”

“That means that some of them will be drowned.”

“Let them drown. I left him to find out that part of the dream for himself. Then I told him how he must make another causeway, bigger and stronger than the last, and a tower on which I could stand and curse the English. And I promised him to bring a storm right in the faces of the English, so that they could neither fight nor see.”

“But if the storm does not come?”

“It will come. I know the signs of the sky,–who better?–and the weather will break up in a week. Therefore I told him he must begin his works at once, before the rain came on; and that we would go and ask the spirit of the well to tell us the fortunate day for attacking.”

“That is my business,” said the other; “and my spirit likes the smell of gold as well as yours. Little you would have got from me, if you had not given me half the chain.”

Then the two rose.

“Let us see whether the English hog is asleep.”

One of them came and listened to Hereward’s breathing, and put her hand upon his chest. His hair stood on end; a cold sweat came over him. But he snored more loudly than ever.

The two old crones went out satisfied. Then Hereward rose, and glided after them.

They went down a meadow to a little well, which Hereward had marked as he rode thither, hung round with bits of rag and flowers, as similar “holy wells” are decorated in Ireland to this day.

He hid behind a hedge, and watched them stooping over the well, mumbling he knew not what of cantrips.

Then there was silence, and a tinkling sound as of water.

“Once–twice–thrice,” counted the witches. Nine times he counted the tinkling sound.

“The ninth day,–the ninth day, and the king shall take Ely,” said one in a cracked scream, rising, and shaking her fist toward the isle.

Hereward was more than half-minded to have put his dagger–the only weapon which he had–into the two old beldames on the spot. But the fear of an outcry kept him still. He had found out already so much, that he was determined to find out more. So to-morrow he would go up to the court itself, and take what luck sent.

He slipt back to the cabin and lay down again; and as soon as he had seen the two old crones safe asleep, fell asleep himself, and was so tired that he lay till the sun was high.

“Get up!” screamed the old dame at last, kicking him, “or I shall make you give me another crock for a double night’s rest.”

He paid his lodging, put the panniers on the mare, and went on crying pots.

When he came to the outer gateway of the court he tied up the mare, and carried the crockery in on his own back boldly. The scullions saw him, and called him into the kitchen to see his crockery, without the least intention of paying for what they took.

A man of rank belonging to the court came in, and stared fixedly at Hereward.

“You are mightily like that villain Hereward, man,” quoth he.

“Anon?” asked Hereward, looking as stupid as he could.

“If it were not for his brown face and short hair, he is as like the fellow as a churl can be to a knight.”

“Bring him into the hall,” quoth another, “and let us see if any man knows him.”

Into the great hall he was brought, and stared at by knights and squires. He bent his knees, rounded his shoulders, and made himself look as mean as he could.

Ivo Taillebois and Earl Warrenne came down and had a look at him.

“Hereward!” said Ivo. “I will warrant that little slouching cur is not he. Hereward must be half as big again, if it be true that he can kill a man with one blow of his fist.”

“You may try the truth of that for yourself some day,” thought Hereward.

“Does any one here talk English? Let us question the fellow,” said Earl Warrenne.

“Hereward? Hereward? Who wants to know about that villain?” answered the potter, as soon as he was asked in English. “Would to Heaven he were here, and I could see some of you noble knights and earls paying him for me; for I owe him more than ever I shall pay myself.”

“What does he mean?”

“He came out of the isle ten days ago, nigh on to evening, and drove off a cow of mine and four sheep, which was all my living, noble knights, save these pots.”

“And where is he since?”

“In the isle, my lords, wellnigh starved, and his folk falling away from him daily from hunger and ague-fits. I doubt if there be a hundred sound men left in Ely.”

“Have you been in thither, then, villain?”

“Heaven forbid! I in Ely? I in the wolf’s den? If I went in with naught but my skin, they would have it off me before I got out again. If your lordships would but come down, and make an end of him once for all; for he is a great tyrant and terrible, and devours us poor folk like so many mites in cheese.”

“Take this babbler into the kitchen, and feed him,” quoth Earl Warrenne; and so the colloquy ended.

Into the kitchen again the potter went. The king’s luncheon was preparing; and he listened to their chatter, and picked up this at least, which was valuable to him,–that the witches’ story was true; that a great attack would be made from Aldreth; that boats had been ordered up the river to Cotinglade, and pioneers and entrenching tools were to be sent on that day to the site of the old causeway.

But soon he had to take care of himself. Earl Warrenne’s commands to feed him were construed by the cook-boys and scullions into a command to make him drunk likewise. To make a laughing-stock of an Englishman was too tempting a jest to be resisted; and Hereward was drenched (says the chronicler) with wine and beer, and sorely baited and badgered. At last one rascal hit upon a notable plan.

“Pluck out the English hog’s hair and beard, and put him blindfold in the midst of his pots, and see what a smash we shall have.”

Hereward pretended not to understand the words, which were spoken in French; but when they were interpreted to him, he grew somewhat red about the ears.

Submit he would not. But if he defended himself, and made an uproar in the king’s Court, he might very likely find himself riding Odin’s horse before the hour was out. However, happily for him, the wine and beer had made him stout of heart, and when one fellow laid hold of his beard, he resisted sturdily.

The man struck him, and that hard. Hereward, hot of temper, and careless of life, struck him again, right under the ear.

The fellow dropped for dead.

Up leapt cook-boys, scullions, _lecheurs_ (who hung about the kitchen to _lecher,_ lick the platters), and all the foul-mouthed rascality of a great mediaeval household; and attacked Hereward _cum fureis et tridentibus,_ with forks and flesh-hooks.

Then was Hereward aware of a great broach, or spit, before the fire; and recollecting how he had used such a one as a boy against the monks of Peterborough, was minded to use it against the cooks of Brandon; which he did so heartily, that in a few moments he had killed one, and driven the others backward in a heap.

But his case was hopeless. He was soon overpowered by numbers from outside, and dragged into the hall, to receive judgment for the mortal crime of slaying a man within the precincts of the Court.

He kept up heart. He knew that the king was there; he knew that he should most likely get justice from the king. If not, he could but discover himself, and so save his life: for that the king would kill him knowingly, he did not believe.

So he went in boldly and willingly, and up the hall, where, on the dais, stood William the Norman.

William had finished his luncheon, and was standing at the board side. A page held water in a silver basin, in which he was washing his hands. Two more knelt, and laced his long boots, for he was, as always, going a-hunting.

Then Hereward looked at the face of the great man, and felt at once that it was the face of the greatest man whom he had ever met.

“I am not that man’s match,” said he to himself. “Perhaps it will all end in being his man, and he my master.”

“Silence, knaves!” said William, “and speak one of you at a time. How came this?”

“A likely story, forsooth!” said he, when he had heard. “A poor English potter comes into my court, and murders my men under my very eyes for mere sport. I do not believe you, rascals! You, churl,” and he spoke through an English interpreter, “tell me your tale, and justice you shall have or take, as you deserve. I am the King of England, man, and I know your tongue, though I speak it not yet, more pity.”

Hereward fell on his knees.

“If you are indeed my Lord the King, then I am safe; for there is justice in you, at least so all men say.” And he told his tale, manfully.

“Splendeur Dex! but this is a far likelier story, and I believe it. Hark you, you ruffians! Here am I, trying to conciliate these English by justice and mercy whenever they will let me, and here are you outraging them, and driving them mad and desperate, just that you may get a handle against them, and thus rob the poor wretches and drive them into the forest. From the lowest to the highest,–from Ivo Taillebois there down to you cook-boys,–you are all at the same game. And I will stop it! The next time I hear of outrage to unarmed man or harmless woman, I will hang that culprit, were he Odo my brother himself.”

This excellent speech was enforced with oaths so strange and terrible, that Ivo Taillebois shook in his boots; and the chaplain prayed fervently that the roof might not fall in on their heads.

“Thou smilest, man?” said William, quickly, to the kneeling Hereward. “So thou understandest French?”

“A few words only, most gracious King, which we potters pick up, wandering everywhere with our wares,” said Hereward, speaking in French; for so keen was William’s eye, that he thought it safer to play no tricks with him.

Nevertheless, he made his French so execrable, that the very scullions grinned, in spite of their fear.

“Look you,” said William, “you are no common churl; you have fought too well for that. Let me see your arm.”

Hereward drew up his sleeve.

“Potters do not carry sword-scars like those; neither are they tattooed like English thanes. Hold up thy head, man, and let us see thy throat.”

Hereward, who had carefully hung down his head to prevent his throat-patterns being seen, was forced to lift it up.

“Aha! So I expected. More fair ladies’ work there. Is not this he who was said to be so like Hereward? Very good. Put him in ward till I come back from hunting. But do him no harm. For”–and William fixed on Hereward eyes of the most intense intelligence–“were he Hereward himself, I should be right glad to see Hereward safe and sound; my man at last, and earl of all between Humber and the Fens.”

But Hereward did not rise at the bait. With a face of stupid and ludicrous terror, he made reply in broken French.

“Have mercy, mercy, Lord King! Make not that fiend earl over us. Even Ivo Taillebois there would be better than he. Send him to be earl over the imps in hell, or over the wild Welsh who are worse still: but not over us, good Lord King, whom he hath polled and peeled till we are–“

“Silence!” said William, laughing, as did all round him, “Thou art a cunning rogue enough, whoever thou art. Go into limbo, and behave thyself till I come back.”

“All saints send your grace good sport, and thereby me a good deliverance,” quoth Hereward, who knew that his fate might depend on the temper in which William returned. So he was thrust into an outhouse, and there locked up.

He sat on an empty barrel, meditating on the chances of his submitting to the king after all, when the door opened, and in strode one with a drawn sword in one hand, and a pair of leg-shackles in the other.

“Hold out thy shins, fellow! Thou art not going to sit at thine ease there like an abbot, after killing one of us grooms, and bringing the rest of us into disgrace. Hold out thy legs, I say!”

“Nothing easier,” quoth Hereward, cheerfully, and held out a leg. But when the man stooped to put on the fetters, he received a kick which sent him staggering.

After which he recollected very little, at least in this world. For Hereward cut off his head with his own sword.

After which (says the chronicler) he broke away out of the house, and over garden walls and palings, hiding and running, till he got to the front gate, and leaped upon mare Swallow.

And none saw him, save one unlucky groom-boy, who stood yelling and cursing in front of the mare’s head, and went to seize the bridle.

Whereon, between the imminent danger and the bad language, Hereward’s blood rose, and he smote that unlucky groom-boy; but whether he slew him or not, the chronicler had rather not say.

Then he shook up mare Swallow, and rode for his life, with knights and squires (for the hue and cry was raised) galloping at her heels.

Who then were astonished but those knights, as they saw the ugly potter’s garron gaining on them length after length, till she and her rider had left them far behind?

Who then was proud but Hereward, as the mare tucked her great thighs under her, and swept on over heath and rabbit burrow, over rush and fen, sound ground and rotten all alike to that enormous stride, to that keen bright eye which foresaw every footfall, to that raking shoulder which picked her up again at every stagger?

Hereward laid the bridle on her neck, and let her go. Fall she could not, and tire she could not; and he half wished she might go on forever. Where could a man be better than on a good horse, with all the cares of this life blown away out of his brains by the keen air which rushed around his temples? And he galloped on, as cheery as a boy, shouting at the rabbits as they scuttled from under his feet, and laughing at the dottrel as they postured and anticked on the mole-hills.

But think he must, at last, of how to get home. For to go through Mildenhall again would not be safe, and he turned over the moors to Icklingham; and where he went after, no man can tell.

Certainly not the chronicler; for he tells how Hereward got back by the Isle of Somersham. Which is all but impossible, for Somersham is in Huntingdonshire, many a mile on the opposite side of Ely Isle.

And of all those knights that followed him, none ever saw or heard sign of him save one; and his horse came to a standstill in “the aforesaid wood,” which the chronicler says was Somersham; and he rolled off his horse, and lay breathless under a tree, looking up at his horse’s heaving flanks and wagging tail, and wondering how he should get out of that place before the English found him and made an end of him.

Then there came up to him a ragged churl, and asked him who he was, and offered to help him.

“For the sake of God and courtesy,” quoth he,–his Norman pride being wellnigh beat out of him,–“if thou hast seen or heard anything of Hereward, good fellow, tell me, and I will repay thee well.”

“As thou hast asked me for the sake of God and of courtesy, Sir Knight, I will tell thee. I am Hereward. And in token thereof, thou shalt give me up thy lance and sword, and take instead this sword which I carried off from the king’s court; and promise me, on the faith of a knight, to bear it back to King William; and tell him that Hereward and he have met at last, and that he had best beware of the day when they shall meet again.”

So that knight, not having recovered his wind, was fain to submit, and go home a sadder and a wiser man. And King William laughed a royal laugh, and commanded his knights that they should in no wise harm Hereward, but take him alive, and bring him in, and they should have great rewards.

Which seemed to them more easily said than done.

CHAPTER XXXI.

HOW THEY FOUGHT AGAIN AT ALDRETH.

Hereward came back in fear and trembling, after all. He believed in the magic powers of the witch of Brandon; and he asked Torfrida, in his simplicity, whether she was not cunning enough to defeat her spells by counter spells.

Torfrida smiled, and shook her head.

“My knight, I have long since given up such vanities. Let us not fight evil with evil, but rather with good. Better are prayers than charms; for the former are heard in heaven above, and the latter only in the pit below. Let me and all the women of Ely go rather in procession to St. Etheldreda’s well, there above the fort at Aldreth, and pray St. Etheldreda to be with us when the day shall come, and defend her own isle and the honor of us women who have taken refuge in her holy arms.”

So all the women of Ely walked out barefoot to St. Etheldreda’s well, with Torfrida at their head clothed in sackcloth, and with fetters on her wrists and waist and ankles; which she vowed, after the strange, sudden, earnest fashion of those times, never to take off again till she saw the French host flee from Aldreth before the face of St. Etheldreda. So they prayed, while Hereward and his men worked at the forts below. And when they came back, and Torfrida was washing her feet, sore and bleeding from her pilgrimage, Hereward came in.

“You have murdered your poor soft feet, and taken nothing thereby, I fear.”

“I have. If I had walked on sharp razors all the way, I would have done it gladly, to know what I know now. As I prayed I looked out over the fen; and St. Etheldreda put a thought into my heart. But it is so terrible a one, that I fear to tell it to you. And yet it seems our only chance.”

Hereward threw himself at her feet, and prayed her to tell. At last she spoke, as one half afraid of her own words,–

“Will the reeds burn, Hereward?”

Hereward kissed her feet again and again, calling her his prophetess, his savior.

“Burn! yes, like tinder, in this March wind, if the drought only holds. Pray that the drought may hold, Torfrida.”

“There, there, say no more. How hard-hearted war makes even us women! There, help me to take off this rough sackcloth, and dress myself again.”

Meanwhile William had moved his army again to Cambridge, and on to Willingham field, and there he began to throw up those “globos and montanas,” of which Leofric’s paraphraser talks, but of which now no trace remains. Then he began to rebuild his causeway, broader and stronger; and commanded all the fishermen of the Ouse to bring their boats to Cotinglade, and ferry over his materials. “Among whom came Hereward in his boat, with head and beard shaven lest he should be known, and worked diligently among the rest. But the sun did not set that day without mischief; for before Hereward went off, he finished his work by setting the whole on fire, so that it was all burnt, and some of the French killed and drowned.”

And so he went on, with stratagems and ambushes, till “after seven days’ continual fighting, they had hardly done one day’s work; save four ‘globos’ of wood, in which they intended to put their artillery. But on the eighth day they determined to attack the isle, putting in the midst of them that pythoness woman on a high place, where she might be safe freely to exercise her art.”

It was not Hereward alone who had entreated Torfrida to exercise her magic art in their behalf. But she steadily refused, and made good Abbot Thurstan support her refusal by a strict declaration, that he would have no fiends’ games played in Ely, as long as he was abbot alive on land.

Torfrida, meanwhile, grew utterly wild. Her conscience smote her, in spite of her belief that St. Etheldreda had inspired her, at the terrible resource which she had hinted to her husband, and which she knew well he would carry out with terrible success. Pictures of agony and death floated before her eyes, and kept her awake at night. She watched long hours in the church in prayer; she fasted; she disciplined her tender body with sharp pains; she tried, after the fashion of those times, to atone for her sin, if sin it was. At last she had worked herself up into a religious frenzy. She saw St. Etheldreda in the clouds, towering over the isle, menacing the French host with her virgin palm-branch. She uttered wild prophecies of ruin and defeat to the French; and then, when her frenzy collapsed, moaned secretly of ruin and defeat hereafter to themselves. But she would be bold; she would play her part; she would encourage the heroes who looked to her as one inspired, wiser and loftier than themselves.

And so it befell, that when the men marched down to Haddenham that afternoon, Torfrida rode at their head on a white charger, robed from throat to ankle in sackcloth, her fetters clanking on her limbs. But she called on the English to see in her the emblem of England, captive yet, unconquered, and to break her fetters and the worse fetters of every woman in England who was the toy and slave of the brutal invaders; and so fierce a triumph sparkled from her wild hawk-eyes that the Englishmen looked up to her weird beauty as to that of an inspired saint; and when the Normans came on to the assault there stood on a grassy mound behind the English fort a figure clothed in sackcloth, barefooted and bareheaded, with fetters shining on waist, and wrist, and ankle,–her long black locks streaming in the wind, her long white arms stretched crosswise toward heaven, in imitation of Moses of old above the battle with Amalek; invoking St. Etheldreda and all the powers of Heaven, and chanting doom and defiance to the invaders.

And the English looked on her, and cried: “She is a prophetess! We will surely do some great deed this day, or die around her feet like heroes!”

And opposite to her, upon the Norman tower, the old hag of Brandon howled and gibbered with filthy gestures, calling for the thunder-storm which did not come; for all above, the sky was cloudless blue.

And the English saw and felt, though they could not speak it, dumb nation as they were, the contrast between the spirit of cruelty and darkness and the spirit of freedom and light.

So strong was the new bridge, that William trusted himself upon it on horseback, with Ivo Taillebois at his side.

William doubted the powers of the witch, and felt rather ashamed of his new helpmate; but he was confident in his bridge, and in the heavy artillery which he had placed in his four towers.

Ivo Taillebois was utterly confident in his witch, and in the bridge likewise.

William waited for the rising of the tide; and when the tide was near its height, he commanded the artillery to open, and clear the fort opposite of the English. Then with crash and twang, the balistas and catapults went off, and great stones and heavy lances hurtled through the air.

“Back!” shouted Torfrida, raised almost to madness, by fasting, self-torture, and religious frenzy. “Out of yon fort, every man. Why waste your lives under that artillery? Stand still this day, and see how the saints of Heaven shall fight for you.”

So utter was the reverence which she commanded for the moment, that every man drew back, and crowded round her feet outside the fort.

“The cowards are fleeing already. Let your men go, Sir King!” shouted Taillebois.

“On to the assault! Strike for Normandy!” shouted William.

“I fear much,” said he to himself, “that this is some stratagem of that Hereward’s. But conquered they must be.”

The evening breeze curled up the reach. The great pike splashed out from the weedy shores, and sent the white-fish flying in shoals into the low glare of the setting sun; and heeded not, stupid things, the barges packed with mailed men, which swarmed in the reeds on either side the bridge, and began to push out into the river.

The starlings swung in thousands round the reed-ronds, looking to settle in their wonted place: but dare not; and rose and swung round again, telling each other, in their manifold pipings, how all the reed-ronds teemed with mailed men. And all above, the sky was cloudless blue.

And then came a trample, a roll of many feet on the soft spongy peat, a low murmur which rose into wild shouts of “Dex Aie!” as a human tide poured along the causeway, and past the witch of Brandon Heath.

“‘Dex Aie?'” quoth William, with a sneer. “‘Debbles Aie!’ would fit better.”

“If, Sire, the powers above would have helped us, we should have been happy enough to—-But if they would not, it is not our fault if we try below,” said Ivo Taillebois.

William laughed. “It is well to have two strings to one’s bow, sir. Forward, men! forward!” shouted he, riding out to the bridge-end, under the tower.

“Forward!” shouted Ivo Taillebois.

“Forward!” shouted the hideous hag overhead. “The spirit of the well fights for you.”

“Fight for yourselves,” said William.

There was twenty yards of deep clear water between Frenchman and Englishman. Only twenty yards. Not only the arrows and arblast quarrels, but heavy hand-javelins, flew across every moment; every now and then a man toppled forward, and plunged into the blue depth among the eels and pike, to find his comrades of the summer before; then the stream was still once more. The coots and water-hens swam in and out of the reeds, and wondered what it was all about. The water-lilies flapped upon the ripple, as lonely as in the loneliest mere. But their floats were soon broken, their white cups stained with human gore. Twenty yards of deep clear water. And treasure inestimable to win by crossing it.

They thrust out baulks, canoes, pontoons; they crawled upon them like ants, and thrust out more yet beyond, heedless of their comrades, who slipped, and splashed, and sank, holding out vain hands to hands too busy to seize them. And always the old witch jabbered overhead, with her cantrips, pointing, mumming, praying for the storm; while all above, the sky was cloudless blue.

And always on the mound opposite, while darts and quarrels whistled round her head, stood Torfrida, pointing with outstretched scornful finger at the stragglers in the river, and chanting loudly, what the Frenchmen could not tell; but it made their hearts, as it was meant to do, melt like wax within them.

“They have a counter witch to yours, Ivo, it seems; and a fairer one. I am afraid the devils, especially if Asmodeus be at hand, are more likely to listen to her than to that old broomstick-rider aloft.”

“Fair is, that fair cause has, Sir King.”

“A good argument for honest men, but none for fiends. What is the fair fiend pointing at so earnestly there?”

“Somewhat among the reeds. Hark to her now! She is singing, somewhat more like an angel than a fiend, I will say for her.”

And Torfrida’s bold song, coming clear and sweet across the water, rose louder and shriller till it almost drowned the jabbering of the witch.

“She sees more there than we do.”

“I see it!” cried William, smiting his hand upon his thigh. “Par le splendeur Dex! She has been showing them where to fire the reeds; and they have done it!”

A puff of smoke; a wisp of flame; and then another and another; and a canoe shot out from the reeds on the French shore, and glided into the reeds of the island.

“The reeds are on fire, men! Have a care,” shouted Ivo.

“Silence, fool! Frighten them once, and they will leap like sheep into that gulf. Men! right about! Draw off,–slowly and in order. We will attack again to-morrow.”

The cool voice of the great captain arose too late. A line of flame was leaping above the reed bed, crackling and howling before the evening breeze. The column on the causeway had seen their danger but too soon, and fled. But whither?

A shower of arrows, quarrels, javelins, fell upon the head of the column as it tried to face about and retreat, confusing it more and more. One arrow, shot by no common aim, went clean through William’s shield, and pinned it to the mailed flesh. He could not stifle a cry of pain.

“You are wounded, Sire. Ride for your life! It is worth that of a thousand of these churls,” and Ivo seized William’s bridle and dragged him, in