HEREWARD GOES TO BRUNN, AND IS DISTURBED THERE.
From Peterborough the Lord of Brunn made one good march across the fen
country to Crowland, where he saluted the good Abbat and brotherhood,
who had put their house into excellent order. And having tarried for a
short season with the trusty monks of Crowland, he went down the river
Welland unto Spalding, where he embarked the treasure which he had
taken, and sent Girolamo of Salerno to have charge of it and see it
safely delivered to the Lord Abbat of Ely.[179] Having done all this,
and having seen that the river Welland and the country about Crowland
and Spalding were well guarded, Hereward went across the country to
Brunn to visit his fair wife, whom he had not seen since the quinquaine
of Pasche. Elfric went with him, and in this manner there were two
happy meetings. The old manor-house at Brunn had been beautified as
well as strengthened under the eye of the Ladie Alftrude; and the old
township, being ridded of the Normans, was beginning to look peaceful
and prosperous as it used to do in the happy times of the good Lord
Leofric of blessed memory. The unthinking people were already
forgetting their past troubles, and beginning to imagine that there
would be no troubles for the future, or that, come what might the
Normans would never get footing again in the fen country. Elfric was
not an unthinking young man, but his love for Maid Mildred caused him
to take up the notion of the townfolk. He thought he might soon turn
his sword into a reaping-hook, and that it was already time for keeping
the promise which his master had made to him. Mildred said nay, nay,
but in a manner which sounded very like yea, yea. Lord Hereward said,
“Wait awhile; ye are both young, and this war is not over. Beyond the
fens the Normans are still triumphant, and the Saxons confounded and
submissive. Elfric, there is work to do, and short is the time that I
can abide here.”
The ex-novice quietly submitted himself to the will of his lord; and
for a short season he lead a very easy, happy life, hawking or fishing
in the morning, with Hereward and the ladie, and rambling in the eve
with Mildred in the wood which lay near the house. One fine summer eve,
about fifteen days after their coming to Brunn, Elfric and Mildred went
rather farther into the wood than it had been usual for them to go; and
reaching the bank of a clear little stream, they sat down among the
tall rushes, and after talking and laughing for awhile they became
reflective and silent, and gazed at the stream as it glided by, all
gilded and enamelled by the setting sun. They had not sate thus long
when Elfric was startled by some distant sound, which did not reach the
ear of Mildred, for when he said, “What noise is that?” she said she
heard none. But Elfric was quite certain he had heard a noise afar off,
and a sound of a rustling among the willows and fen-trees. “Well,” said
Mildred, “it will be the evening breeze, or the fen-sparrows, or mayhap
the marsh-tits tapping the old willow-trees to hollow out their nests.”
“There breathes not a breath of air, and this is not the season in
which the marsh-tit makes its nest in the old willows,” said Elfric.
“But hark! I hear the sound again, and ... ah! what is that?... By St.
Ovin’s cross! I see afar off a something shining in the red sunbeams
that looks like the head of a Norman lance! See! look there, behind
those trees at the foot of yon hillock!”
The maiden looked, and although at first she saw nothing, she soon
turned pale, and said, “In truth, Elfric, I see a spear, and another,
and now another. But now they move not! they disappear.”
“Mildred,” said the young man, “run back to the manor-house with thy
best speed, and tell Lord Hereward what thou hast seen!”
“But wilt thou not go with me? I almost fear to go alone through the
wood.”
“The path is straight and dry,” said Elfric; “there is no danger: but I
must go forward and discover what be these new comers, who are coming
so stealthily towards the wood and the manor-house, and who bring
lances with them and sound no horn.”
“But there will be peril for thee, oh Elfric, unarmed and all alone as
thou art.”
“Fear not for that, my Mildred; I will crawl through the rushes and
keep this winding stream between me and these strangers. But fly to the
house, and if thou chancest to meet any of Lord Hereward’s people, bid
them hasten home and look to their arms.”
“Alas!” quoth Mildred, “when will this fighting be over?” and having so
said, she flew like a lapwing towards the house, while Elfric
disappeared among the sedges and bulrushes.
“Lances so near the wood!” said Hereward, “and no notice given! Our
guard at Edenham[180] must have fallen asleep!”
“Or mayhap they be gone to Corby,” said Mildred, “for to-day is Corby
wake.”
“Or it may be,” said Hereward, “that thou and Elfric are both
mistaken—albeit his good eyes are not apt to deceive him.”
Before the Lord of Brunn had time to assemble his people, Elfric was
back to speak for himself, and to give more certain and full notice of
what was toward. He had gone near enough not only to see, but also to
hear. The force was a great Norman force led on by Ivo Taille-Bois and
Torauld of Fescamp, who hoped to take Hereward by surprise, and to
recover from him the treasure which he had seized at Peterborough; for,
being robbers themselves, they made sure that he meant to keep the
treasure for himself.
“What be their numbers?” said the Lord of Brunn.
“Two hundred men-at-arms,” responded Elfric.
“Bring they any of their great siege-tools?” asked Hereward.
“None, my Lord. They carry nothing but their arms, and even with that
burthen they seem sorely fatigued. They are covered with our fen mud,
and are all swearing that they should have been forced to travel
without their horses.”
“Then,” said Hereward, “although Girolamo be away, we can hold good
this house and laugh at their attempt to take it. Call in all the good
folk of the township, and then up drawbridge, and make fast gates!”
“Under subjection, my Lord,” quoth Elfric, “I will say that I think
that we can do better than shut ourselves up in the house to wait for
their coming. I heard their plan of approach, and it is this: They are
all to remain concealed where they are until it be dark. Then Ivo
Taille-Bois is to march through the wood, and surround the house with
one hundred men, while that bull-headed Torauld, who seemeth not to
relish the fighting with soldiers so much as he doth the fighting with
unarmed monks, is to lodge himself with the other hundred men on the
skirts of the wood, so as to prevent the people of the township from
coming to the manor-house.”
“Art thou sure,” said Hereward, “that thou knowest Norman French enough
to make out all this sense from their words?”
“Quite certain, my Lord. I was close to them, and they talked loud, as
is their wont. Nay, they talked even louder than common, being angered,
and Ivo-Taille saying that as it was church business the churchman
ought to go foremost; and Torauld saying that Ivo did not enough
respect the lives and limbs of Norman prelates. Set me down this
Torauld for a rank coward! They told me at Peterborough that he was as
big as a bull, and for that much so he is; but from my hiding-place in
the rushes I could see that he quaked and turned pale at the thought of
leading the attack.”
“Thou wast ever a good scout,” said the Lord of Brunn, “but a wary
commander never trusts to one report. We have lads here that know the
paths and the bye-paths. We will have these Normans watched as it grows
dark.”
In the mean time all the good people of the township were forewarned,
and called to the manor-house. The aged, with the women and children,
were to stay within those strong walls; but all the rest were armed,
and kept in readiness to sally forth. Of the sixty merry men that had
stolen the march upon Torauld and got to Peterborough before him, some
had been left at Crowland and some at Spalding, and some had taken up
their long stilts and had walked across the bogs to see their kindred
and friends in Hoilandia. Only one score and ten of these tried
soldiers remained; the good men of the township of Brunn that put on
harness and were ready to fight, made more than another score; and
besides these there was about half a score of hardy hinds who had
followed the Ladie Alftrude from her home.
As it grew dark the scouts reported that the Normans were in motion,
and that they were moving in two separate bodies, even as Elfric
reported they would do. Then the Lord of Brunn went himself to watch
their movements. He made out, more by his ears than by his eyes, that
one body was coming straight on for the wood and the house, and that
the other body was turning round the wood by a path which would bring
them to a little bridge near the edge of the wood, this bridge being
between the township and the manor-house. By his own prudent order
lights had been left burning in one or two of the better sort of
houses, and the whole town thus looked as it usually did at that hour;
while bright lights beamed from every window of the manor-house, to
make Ivo Taille-Bois believe that the Lord of Brunn was feasting and
carousing and wholly off his guard.
“Thus far, well!” thought Hereward, as he ran back to the house. “It
will take these heavy Normans a good length of time to cross the stream
and get into the wood; and while Ivo is coming into the wood on the one
side, I will go out of it on the other side, and catch this bully monk
and his people as in a trap. And Taille-Bois shall rue the day that he
turned his face towards Brunn.”
Leaving half a score of his best men in the house, and commanding all
that were in the house to be silent and without fear, the Lord of Brunn
sallied forth with all the rest of his merry men: and as soon as he and
they were beyond the moat, the little garrison drew up the draw-bridge
and made fast the gate. When he counted his troop, he found it to be
not more than fifty strong; but every man of them was vigorous and well
equipped; and there was truth in the Saxon song which said that every
true Saxon in arms was equal to three Frenchmen, and that the Lord of
Brunn never turned his back even upon six Frenchmen. Warned by Elfric,
that best of all scouts, when Ivo was crossing the stream, and
calculating his only time to a nicety, Hereward marched through a
corner of the wood and took post on some broken ground near the end of
the little bridge. His people were all as silent as the grave, and so
they continued; nor could they be seen any more than they could be
heard, for they lay in the hollows of the ground with their faces prone
to the earth, and their bows and weapons under them: and the night was
now rather dark, and the trees which grew close behind the broken
ground cast a deep shadow over it. The Saxons had not been long in this
their ambuscade when they heard a loud shouting of “A Taille-Bois! A
Taille-Bois!” which came from the side of the manor-house; and the next
instant they heard another loud shouting in their front of “Torauld!
Torauld!”
“So so!” said Hereward, “the twain have timed their marches well! The
monk will be here anon; but let every Saxon among us remain on his face
until he cross the narrow bridge, and then up and fall on!”
And as the Lord of Brunn said, so was it done. Eager to get possession
of the bridge, the monk from Fescamp avoided the little township, and
came straight to the stream[181] which flowed between it and the
manor-house, and crossed over the bridge with all his people: and no
sooner were they all over than the Saxons started up like armed men
springing from the bowels of the earth, and shouting “Hereward for
England!” they fell upon their amazed and confounded enemy, who could
neither discover their strength nor form themselves into any order of
battle. Instanter some of the Normans screamed that these were the
devils of Crowland risen again; and so, screaming, they made a rush
back to the bridge. Now the bridge was very narrow, and walled on
either side with a parapet wall of brickwork; and when the whole of
Torauld’s force began to follow the first fuyards,[182] with a mad
rushing and confusion, they got jammed together upon that narrow
bridge, or falling one over the other they obstructed the passage.
Torauld, that big monk, could not get upon the bridge at all, or near
to it. And as he stood crowded and squeezed by his disordered men, and
heard the Saxon battle-axe ringing upon their mailed armour and plated
shields, he set up his big voice and cried “Quarter! Quarter! Mercy, O
Lord of Brunn!”
“Dost thou surrender, Torauld of Fescamp?” shouted Hereward.
“Aye, and at thy discretion,” said the terrible abbat, no longer
terrible.
“Normans, do ye all surrender upon quarter?” shouted Hereward, who had
already slain three of them with his own hand.
The Normans, not even excepting those on the bridge, or even those five
or six that had gotten beyond the bridge, all declared that they
surrendered at discretion.
“Then,” quoth the Lord of Brunn, “hand me your swords, and come hither
and lay down all your arms!”
And, in that grim darkness, Torauld, and the several leaders of the
band, stretched out their hands and delivered up their swords to
Hereward; and Hereward, as he got them, handed them to his
sword-bearer, and Elfric made a bundle of them all under his left arm,
singing, as he had wont to do in the choir at Spalding, but with a
louder note, “_Infixæ sunt gentes!_—The heathen are sunk down in the
pit that they made: in the net which they hid is their own foot taken!”
And all the Norman men-at-arms, seeing but dimly what they were doing,
and taking the trees on the skirts of the wood for Saxon warriors,
piled their arms in a trice, and allowed themselves to be bound with
their own girdles and baldrics. When Hereward’s people proceeded to
bind Torauld, that tamed monster made a miserable lamentation, for he
thought that the Saxons would bind him first, and then slay him; and
none knew better than himself the intolerable wrongs he had done since
his first coming to the kingdom, and the outrages he had been guilty of
in the monasteries and churches of England. But Elfric bade him bellow
not so miserably, and told him how that it was the custom of the Lord
of Brunn not to slay his prisoners, but only to send them to a place of
safe keeping, such as the Camp of Refuge, or the strong vault under Ely
Abbey. And when the Normans were all bound, Hereward made his
sword-bearer count them all; and Elfric, groping among them as the
shepherd does among his sheep when the night is dark, found and
reported that there were four score and ten of them. The rest had been
slain, or had rushed into the stream to get drowned.
All this work by the bridge had not been done without much noise. In
making their sudden onslaught, and in raising their shout for Hereward,
the Saxons had made the welkin ring; and the cries and screams of the
discomfited Normans were distinctly heard across the wood and at the
manor-house. The Saxons within that house heard both cries, and well
understood what they meant: Ivo Taille-Bois and his men also heard them
and understood them; and so, cursing Torauld the monk for a fool, Ivo
halted his men under cover of the trees; and then, after listening for
a brief space of time, and after hearing plainer than before the Norman
cry of _misericorde_ instead of attempting to surround the house, Ivo
began to retrace his steps through the wood. And although the night was
brightening up elsewhere, it continued so dark in that wood, and his
people ran in so great hurry, that at almost every step some of them
missed the narrow path, or fell over the roots of the trees. And as Ivo
thus retreated, his ear was assailed by the taunting shouts of the
Saxons in the manor-house, and by the triumphant shouts of those who
had sallied forth with Hereward to smite Torauld in the dark.
But louder and louder still were the shouts in the good house of Brunn
when its young Lord returned unhurt (and not a man of his was hurt)
with the captives he had made, and notably with the once terrible
Torauld.
“Thou seest,” said Hereward, “that thy friend Ivo hath not stayed to
keep his appointed meeting with thee at my humble house! but stay thou
here awhile, oh monk of Fescamp! and I will even go try whether I can
overtake Ivo, and bring him back to meet thee! He hath the start, but
is not so good a fenner as I am. So, come, my merry men all, one horn
of wine apiece, and then for a chase through the wood and across the
stream! An we catch not the great wood-cutter, we may perchance cut off
part of his tail. But first lock me up these prisoners in the turret.
Our women and old men will suffice to take care of them while we follow
the chase.”
The Ladie Alftrude, and sundry other persons, thought and said that
Lord Hereward had done enough for this one night; but the Lord of Brunn
thought he had never done enough when there was more to do, and before
Ivo Taille-Bois could get clear out of the wood, Hereward was upon his
track, with fifty of his merry men. Some of the Normans, missing the
ford across the stream, were captured on the bank; but the rest got
safely over, and ran for their lives across the plain, whereon they
never could have run at all if the summer had been less hot and dry.
They were closely followed by the Saxons, who took a good many more of
them, and killed others: but Ivo was too far ahead to be caught; and it
was all in vain that Hereward shouted and called upon him to stop and
measure swords with him on dry ground, and on a fair field. So the Lord
of Brunn gave up the pursuit, and returned to his manor-house, taking
with him a good score more prisoners. And if the louts who had been
sent to keep guard at Edenham had not gone to Corby wake, and had not
drunk themselves drunk there, Ivo Taille-Bois would have been captured
or killed, with every man that followed him, before he could have got
out upon the road which leads from the fen country to Stamford. The
rest of that night was given to festivity and joy. On the morrow
morning Hereward brought his Norman captives forth from the turret into
the great hall, and made inquest into their names and qualities. There
were several knights of name among them; several that had high rank and
good lands in Normandie before ever they came to plunder England. Now
these proud foreign knights condescended to address the Lord of Brunn
as one of the military confraternity, and they spoke with him about
ransom as knight speaks to knight. Hereward, knowing well how the Abbat
of Ely had been constrained to lay hands on that which had been offered
on the shrine of the saints, and to deal with unbelieving and usurious
Jews, and how sorely money was needed throughout the Camp of Refuge,
did not gainsay these overtures about ransoms; but he fixed the total
ransom at so high a price, that Torauld and the Norman knights all
vowed that they could never pay or get their friends to pay it. The
Lord of Brunn, who believed them not, told them that they must pay the
three thousand marks he had named, or live and die in the fastnesses of
the fen country. Torauld who loved money more than he loved his own
soul, and who never doubted but that Hereward had all the treasures he
had taken from Peterborough, and meant to keep them for his own use and
profit, offered, as lawful superior of that house, and abbat appointed
by King William, to give the Lord of Brunn a title to all those things
as the price of the ransom for himself and the Norman nobles. But
hereat the Lord of Brunn was greatly incensed, and said, “Robber that
thou art, dost thou take me for a sacrilegious robber? The treasure of
Peterborough is not here, but at Ely,[183] in the safe keeping of the
good Lord Abbat Thurstan, to be kept or even used for the good of
England, and to be restored to Peterborough with bot, and with other
treasure, at the proper season. But thou, oh Torauld of Fescamp, thou
hast no right to it, or control over it; and if thou hadst it, it is
not my father’s son that would barter with thee for the goods of the
church and the spoils of the altar! Torauld of Fescamp, and thou Piron
of Montpinchon, and thou Olivier Nonant, and thou Pierre of Pommereuil,
and the rest of ye, I tell ye one and all, and I swear it by the
blessed rood, that I will never liberate ye, or any of ye, until the
three thousand marks, as ransom, be paid into my hands, or into the
hands of the Lord Abbat of Ely! So, look well to it. Three thousand
marks, or a lifelong home and a grave in the safest and dreariest part
of the fens.”
One and all, they again protested, and even vowed that so large a sum
could never be raised for their liberation; and that they would not so
much as name the sum to their friends and families.
“Well,” said the Lord of Brunn, “then to-morrow we will clap ye all on
ship-board and send ye across the salt sea Wash for Ely and the Camp of
Refuge.”
And on the morrow, by times, all the Norman captives, gentle or simple,
knights or men-at-arms, were marched off to the Welland and put on
board ship and under hatches: nor ever did they get free from their
Saxon prison in the fens until twelve good months after their capture,
when they got the money, and paid down the three thousand marks,
together with some small pecunia for their meat and drink, and the
trouble they had given during their captivity. And long did Torauld
bemoan the day when he accepted the office of abbat of Peterborough,
and went to take vengeance on that house on account of Lord Hereward’s
knighthood. He came forth from the fens an altered and subdued man; and
although he tyrannically ruled a religious house for many years after
these his misadventures, he was never more known to tweak his monks by
the nose with his steel gloves on, or to beat them with the flat of his
sword, or to call out “Come hither, my men-at-arms.” In truth, although
he plucked up spirit enough to rob and revile monks, he never put on
armour or carried a sword again.
Thus had the good Lord of Brunn triumphed on the land which he
inherited from his father and recovered with his own sword; thus within
the good manor of Brunn had he foiled the stratagems of his enemies,
and beaten them and humbled them, and made them the captives of his
sword: but he could not long remain to enjoy his triumph there; his
sword and his counsel were wanted in other parts; and deeming that the
unwonted dryness of the season might perchance enable Ivo Taille-Bois
or some other Norman lord to make another attempt upon Brunn, he took
his ladie with him whither he went. A small but trusty garrison was
left in the old manor-house, together with sundry matrons and maids,
but Mildred went with her ladie, as did Elfric with his lord.
As they came to the Welland, on their way to Ely, there came unto Lord
Hereward some brave men from the world beyond the fens, to tell him
that a great body of Saxon serfs had gathered together at the edge of
Sherwood forest and on the banks of the Trent, and that all these men
were ready to join him and become his servants and soldiers. Hereward
gave the messengers the encouragement they seemed to merit, and sent
his sword-bearer back with them to see what manner of men the band was
made of, and to bring them across the fens if he should find them worth
their bread and meat.
Now the men that had collected were hardy and fit for war, and many of
them, being natives to the forests and trained to hunting, were keen
bowmen. The Lord of Brunn, who knew the worth of the English bow, much
wanted good bowmen; and thus Elfric would gladly have brought away all
these foresters with him. But when the marching time came, sundry of
these churls said that they were well where they were in Sherwood:—and
for that matter so they were, for the Normans could not easily get at
them, and they were lords of the forest and of all the game in it, and
they robbed all that came near to the forest. But all the churls were
not so churlish, nor so fond of living without law and order, nor so
careless as to what became of their countrymen; and many were the good
bowmen that said they would go to the Saxon camp. Some of these upland
churls, however, who had not led so free a life as the fenners, and had
not had such good Lords as the Abbat of Ely and the Lord of Brunn,
began to say to the men of the hills that were following Elfric, that
they thought they were engaging in an idle chase and a very useless
struggle, inasmuch as they would still be all serfs and bondmen whether
the Normans or the Saxons ruled the land. But Elfric, hearing this,
bade them all remember that it was one thing to obey a Lord that spoke
their own tongue, and another to obey a stranger Lord who spoke it not
and despised it; that the good Saxon Lords were ever merciful and kind,
not putting more labour on the serf than the serf could bear, and
feeding and entertaining him well when sickness or when old age allowed
him not to work at all; and that the good old Saxon laws and customs
did not leave the eyes, limbs, life, and conscience of the serfs in the
hands of their lords and masters, nor allow Christian bondmen to be
treated as though they were beasts of the field; in which fashion the
Normans were now treating them. Quoth a grey-beard in the crowd, “There
is some truth in what the young man saith. That was not a bad law which
said, ‘Let the churl keep the fasts of the church as well as the Lord,
and let the master that feeds his serfs on fast-days with meat, denying
them bread, be put in the pillory.’”
“Aye,” said another elder, smothing his beard, “but that was a still
better law which said, ‘Let not the serf be made to work on the
feast-days of the church, nor to do any manner of work on the Sabbath:
Let all have rest on the seventh day, which is the day of the Lord
God!’”
Here one who had been a mass-priest in the upland country, but who had
fled from the intolerable persecutions of the Normans and was now armed
against that people, spoke as one that had tasted books, and said,
“Many were our good old Saxon laws for keeping holy the Sabbath-day,
and making the seventh day a day of rest for all that live in the land,
whether rich or poor, master or slave. The fourth commandment, which
the Normans set at nought in as far as the poor English serf is
concerned in it, was a most binding law with all good Saxons, and was
enforced by many royal laws and civil enactments, and with the imposing
of penalties upon all such as broke the commandment. The laws and
ordinances of King Edward the Elder said—‘If any one engage in Sunday
marketing, let him forfeit the goods and pay a fine of thirty
shillings. If a freeman work, let him forfeit his freedom, or redeem it
by paying wite[184]; if a Lord oblige his churl to work, let him pay
wite.’ And, after this, King Athelstane said in his dooms ‘that there
should be no marketing and no labour on Sundays, and that if any one
did market on Sundays he should forfeit the goods and pay thirty
shillings.’ And, after this, King Ethelred said in his dooms, ‘Let
Sunday’s festival be rightly kept by _all_, as is becoming, and let
marketings and folkmotes be carefully abstained from on that holy day;
let huntings and worldly works be strictly abstained from on that day.’
And by the laws of King Edgar no man was to work from noontide of the
Saturday till the dawn of Monday; and soulscot[185] was to be paid for
every Christian man to the priest, in order that the priest might pray
for him and instruct him. And the canons[186] of Ælfric, inhibiting the
breach of the sanctity of the Lord’s day, say, ‘The mass-priests shall
on Sundays explain to the people the sense of the Gospels in English,
and explain to them in English the pater-noster and the creed, to the
end that all the people may know the faith and cultivate their
Christianity.’ And in this very canon the pious Ælfric saith, ‘Let the
priest and teacher beware of that which the prophet said; _Canes muti
non possunt latrare_, Dumb dogs cannot bark!’ But what are these Norman
teachers and priests from beyond the sea but dumb dogs to the Saxon
people, seeing they know no English and will not learn it?”
“Yes,” said the ancient who had first spoken, “until these Normans came
among us the bondman had one day in seven to himself, and on every
other festival of the church he was allowed to forget his bonds, and to
take rest and enjoyment, and to think of his soul; but now we be
treated as if we had no souls.”
“And,” said another of the serfs, “in former days the laws protected
the money and goods of a bondman, if so be he could obtain any, for the
Saxon law said that the master must not take from his slave that which
the slave had gained by his industry. But now the serf cannot so much
as call his life his property.”
“Nor can any other true Saxon call anything his own, unless he stand up
and fight for it, and prove strong enough to keep it,” said Elfric, who
was well pleased to see and hear that his discourse on the difference
between the old bondage and the present was not thrown away upon the
upland serfs.
Quoth the priest who had before spoken, “Our old Saxon laws were chary
of blood, and held in tender respect the life of all men, whether they
belonged to the nobility or were in a state of villainage. Few crimes
were punished with death or even with mutilation. The commandment that
man shall do no murder was not only read in churches, but was
recommended and enforced in the laws and dooms of many Saxon kings. ‘If
any one be slain,’ said the old law, ‘let him be paid for according to
his birth.’ If a thane slew a churl, he had to pay for it....”
“Aye,” said one of the serfs, “but the value of the life of a churl was
not more than the price of a few bullocks; whereas hides of land or the
worth of hundreds of bullocks was to be paid by him that slew a thane.”
“Tush!” quoth Elfric, “thou canst not expect that the life of a churl
can ever be priced so high as that of a noble, or that the same doom
shall await the man that kills a Lord and the man that kills a peasant!”
The priest and all the bystanders said that such an expectation would
be too unreasonable, and that such a thing could never come to pass in
this world: and so the discontented churl merely muttered that he
thought, since it was allowed the churl had an immortal soul, even as
the thane, that the life of a churl was worth more than a few bullocks;
and then said no more about it, bethinking himself that even that price
was better than no price at all, and that no Normans that he knew of
had ever yet been made to make bot for maiming or killing a Saxon serf.
Some few of these men returned into Sherwood forest, to live at large
there, but the major part of them tied on their buskins, fastened their
sheep-skin jackets, put their bows and quivers to their backs, and
marched off merrily with the sword-bearer to join Lord Hereward at Ely
or in the Camp. And after this, and at various times, many upland
churls, discontented with their lot, came from the northern side of the
Trent and from other parts of the country to join the Saxon army in the
fens. It must not be thought that the Lord of Brunn was unmindful of
the old laws, which ordained that no Lord or free man should harbour or
entertain the churl that had fled from his rightful owner; but Hereward
felt that no Norman could have the right of property over Saxon serfs;
and therefore he harboured and entertained such as came freely to him.
If the case had been otherwise, he would, like the just Lord that he
was, have put collars and chains upon the serfs and have sent them back
to their masters.