CHAPTER I.

Produced by Anne Soulard, Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon,

S.R.Ellison and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

HEREWARD

THE LAST OF THE ENGLISH

CONTENTS.

PRELUDE

CHAPTER

I. HOW HEREWARD WAS OUTLAWED, AND WENT NORTH TO SEEK HIS FORTUNES

II. HOW HEREWARD SLEW THE BEAR

III. HOW HEREWARD SUCCORED A PRINCESS OF CORNWALL

IV. HOW HEREWARD TOOK SERVICE WITH RANALD, KING OF WATERFORD

V. HOW HEREWARD SUCCORED THE PRINCESS OF CORNWALL A SECOND TIME

VI. HOW HEREWARD WAS WRECKED UPON THE FLANDERS SHORE

VII. HOW HEREWARD WENT TO THE WAR AT GUISNES

VIII. HOW A FAIR LADY EXERCISED THE MECHANICAL ART TO WIN HEREWARD’S

LOVE

IX. HOW HEREWARD WENT TO THE WAR IN SCALDMARILAND

X. HOW HEREWARD WON THE MAGIC ARMOR

XI. HOW THE HOLLANDERS TOOK HEREWARD FOR A MAGICIAN

XII. HOW HEREWARD TURNED BERSERK

XIII. HOW HEREWARD WON MARE SWALLOW

XIV. HOW HEREWARD RODE INTO BRUGES LIKE A BEGGAR-MAN

XV. HOW EARL TOSTI GODWINSSON CAME TO ST. OMER

XVI. HOW HEREWARD WAS ASKED TO SLAY AN OLD COMRADE

XVII. HOW HEREWARD TOOK THE NEWS FROM STANFORD BRIGG AND HASTINGS

XVIII. HOW EARL GODWIN’S WIDOW CAME TO ST. OMER

XIX. HOW HEREWARD CLEARED BOURNE OF FRENCHMEN

XX. HOW HEREWARD WAS MADE A KNIGHT AFTER THE FASHION OF THE ENGLISH

XXI. HOW IVO TAILLEBOIS MARCHED OUT OF SPALDING TOWN

XXII. HOW HEREWARD SAILED FOR ENGLAND ONCE AND FOR ALL

XXIII. HOW HEREWARD GATHERED AN ARMY

XXIV. HOW ARCHBISHOP ALDRED DIED OF SORROW

XXV. HOW HEREWARD FOUND A WISER MAN IN ENGLAND THAN HIMSELF

XXVI. HOW HEREWARD FULFILLED HIS WORDS TO THE PRIOR OF THE GOLDEN

BOROUGH

XXVII. HOW THEY HELD A GREAT MEETING IN THE HALL OF ELY

XXVIII. HOW THEY FOUGHT AT ALDRETH

XXIX. HOW SIR DADE BROUGHT NEWS FROM ELY

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

XXXI. HOW THEY FOUGHT AGAIN AT ALDRETH

XXXII. HOW KING WILLIAM TOOK COUNSEL OF A CHURCHMAN

XXXIII. HOW THE MONKS OF ELY DID AFTER THEIR KIND

XXXIV. HOW HEREWARD WENT TO THE GREENWOOD

XXXV. HOW ABBOT THOROLD WAS PUT TO RANSOM

XXXVI. HOW ALFTRUDA WROTE TO HEREWARD

XXXVII. HOW HEREWARD LOST SWORD BRAIN-BITER

XXXVIII. HOW HEREWARD CAME IN TO THE KING

XXXIX. HOW TORFRIDA CONFESSED THAT SHE HAD BEEN INSPIRED BY THE DEVIL

XL. HOW HEREWARD BEGAN TO GET HIS SOUL’S PRICE

XLI. HOW EARL WALTHEOF WAS MADE A SAINT

XLII. HOW HEREWARD GOT THE BEST OF HIS SOUL’S PRICE

XLIII. HOW DEEPING FEN WAS DRAINED

HEREWARD, THE LAST OF THE ENGLISH.

PRELUDE.

The heroic deeds of Highlanders, both in these islands and elsewhere,

have been told in verse and prose, and not more often, nor more loudly,

than they deserve. But we must remember, now and then, that there have

been heroes likewise in the lowland and in the fen. Why, however, poets

have so seldom sung of them; why no historian, save Mr. Motley in his

“Rise of the Dutch Republic,” has condescended to tell the tale of their

doughty deeds, is a question not difficult to answer.

In the first place, they have been fewer in number. The lowlands of

the world, being the richest spots, have been generally the soonest

conquered, the soonest civilized, and therefore the soonest taken out

of the sphere of romance and wild adventure, into that of order and law,

hard work and common sense, as well as--too often--into the sphere of

slavery, cowardice, luxury, and ignoble greed. The lowland populations,

for the same reasons, have been generally the first to deteriorate,

though not on account of the vices of civilization. The vices of

incivilization are far worse, and far more destructive of human life;

and it is just because they are so, that rude tribes deteriorate

physically less than polished nations. In the savage struggle for life,

none but the strongest, healthiest, cunningest, have a chance of living,

prospering, and propagating their race. In the civilized state, on the

contrary, the weakliest and the silliest, protected by law, religion,

and humanity, have chance likewise, and transmit to their offspring

their own weakliness or silliness. In these islands, for instance,

at the time of the Norman Conquest, the average of man was doubtless

superior, both in body and mind, to the average of man now, simply

because the weaklings could not have lived at all; and the rich and

delicate beauty, in which the women of the Eastern Counties still

surpass all other races in these isles, was doubtless far more common in

proportion to the numbers of the population.

Another reason--and one which every Scot will understand--why lowland

heroes “carent vate sacro,” is that the lowlands and those who live in

them are wanting in the poetic and romantic elements. There is in the

lowland none of that background of the unknown, fantastic, magical,

terrible, perpetually feeding curiosity and wonder, which still remains

in the Scottish highlands; which, when it disappears from thence, will

remain embalmed forever in the pages of Walter Scott. Against that

half-magical background his heroes stand out in vivid relief; and justly

so. It was not put there by him for stage purposes; it was there as a

fact; and the men of whom he wrote were conscious of it, were moulded by

it, were not ashamed of its influence. Nature among the mountains is too

fierce, too strong, for man. He cannot conquer her, and she awes him. He

cannot dig down the cliffs, or chain the storm-blasts; and his fear of

them takes bodily shape: he begins to people the weird places of the

earth with weird beings, and sees nixes in the dark linns as he fishes

by night, dwarfs in the caves where he digs, half-trembling, morsels of

copper and iron for his weapons, witches and demons on the snow-blast

which overwhelms his herd and his hut, and in the dark clouds which

brood on the untrodden mountain-peak. He lives in fear: and yet, if he

be a valiant-hearted man, his fears do him little harm. They may break

out, at times, in witch-manias, with all their horrible suspicions, and

thus breed cruelty, which is the child of fear; but on the whole they

rather produce in man thoughtfulness, reverence, a sense, confused

yet precious, of the boundless importance of the unseen world. His

superstitions develop his imagination; the moving accidents of a wild

life call out in him sympathy and pathos; and the mountaineer becomes

instinctively a poet.

The lowlander, on the other hand, has his own strength, his own

“virtues,” or manfulnesses, in the good old sense of the word: but they

are not for the most part picturesque or even poetical.

He finds out, soon enough for his weal and his bane, that he is stronger

than Nature; and right tyrannously and irreverently he lords it over

her, clearing, delving, diking, building, without fear or shame. He

knows of no natural force greater than himself, save an occasional

thunder-storm; and against that, as he grows more cunning, he insures

his crops. Why should he reverence Nature? Let him use her, and eat. One

cannot blame him. Man was sent into the world (so says the Scripture)

to fill and subdue the earth. But he was sent into the world for other

purposes, which the lowlander is but too apt to forget. With the awe of

Nature, the awe of the unseen dies out in him. Meeting with no visible

superior, he is apt to become not merely unpoetical and irreverent, but

somewhat of a sensualist and an atheist. The sense of the beautiful dies

out in him more and more. He has little or nothing around him to refine

or lift up his soul, and unless he meet with a religion and with a

civilization which can deliver him, he may sink into that dull brutality

which is too common among the lowest classes of the English lowlands,

and remain for generations gifted with the strength and industry of the

ox, and with the courage of the lion, and, alas! with the intellect of

the former, and the self-restraint of the latter.

But there may be a period in the history of a lowland race when they,

too, become historic for a while. There was such a period for the men of

the Eastern Counties; for they proved it by their deeds.

When the men of Wessex, the once conquering race of Britain, fell at

Hastings once and for all, and struck no second blow, then the men of

the Danelagh disdained to yield to the Norman invader. For seven long

years they held their own, not knowing, like true Englishmen, when

they were beaten; and fought on desperate, till there were none left to

fight. Their bones lay white on every island in the fens; their corpses

rotted on gallows beneath every Norman keep; their few survivors crawled

into monasteries, with eyes picked out, or hands and feet cut off,

or took to the wild wood as strong outlaws, like their successors and

representatives, Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John, Adam Bell, and Clym of

the Cleugh, and William of Cloudeslee. But they never really bent their

necks to the Norman yoke; they kept alive in their hearts that proud

spirit of personal independence, which they brought with them from the

moors of Denmark and the dales of Norway; and they kept alive, too,

though in abeyance for a while, those free institutions which were

without a doubt the germs of our British liberty.

They were a changed folk since first they settled in that

Danelagh;--since first in the days of King Beorhtric, “in the year 787,

three ships of Northmen came from Haeretha land, and the King’s reeve

rode to the place, and would have driven them up to the King’s town, for

he knew not what men they were: but they slew him there and then”; and

after the Saxons and Angles began to find out to their bitter bale what

men they were, those fierce Vikings out of the dark northeast.

But they had long ceased to burn farms, sack convents, torture monks

for gold, and slay every human being they met, in mere Berserker lust

of blood. No Barnakill could now earn his nickname by entreating his

comrades, as they tossed the children on their spear-points, to “Na kill

the barns.” Gradually they had settled down on the land, intermarried

with the Angles and Saxons, and colonized all England north and east of

Watling Street (a rough line from London to Chester), and the eastern

lowlands of Scotland likewise. Gradually they had deserted Thor and Odin

for “the White Christ”; had their own priests and bishops, and built

their own minsters. The convents which the fathers had destroyed, the

sons, or at least the grandsons, rebuilt; and often, casting away sword

and axe, they entered them as monks themselves; and Peterborough,

Ely, and above all Crowland, destroyed by them in Alfred’s time with a

horrible destruction, had become their holy places, where they decked

the altars with gold and jewels, with silks from the far East, and furs

from the far North; and where, as in sacred fortresses, they, and the

liberty of England with them, made their last unavailing stand.

For a while they had been lords of all England. The Anglo-Saxon race was

wearing out. The men of Wessex, priest-ridden, and enslaved by their

own aristocracy, quailed before the free Norsemen, among whom was not a

single serf. The God-descended line of Cerdic and Alfred was worn out.

Vain, incapable, profligate kings, the tools of such prelates as Odo

and Dunstan, were no match for such wild heroes as Thorkill the tall, or

Olaf Trygvasson, or Swend Forkbeard. The Danes had gradually colonized,

not only their own Danelagh and Northumbria, but great part of Wessex.

Vast sums of Danegelt were yearly sent out of the country to buy off

the fresh invasions which were perpetually threatened. Then Ethelred the

Unready, Ethelred Evil-counsel, advised himself to fulfil his name,

and the curse which Dunstan had pronounced against him at the baptismal

font. By his counsel the men of Wessex rose against the unsuspecting

Danes, and on St. Brice’s eve, A.D. 1002, murdered them all with

tortures, man, woman, and child. It may be that they only did to the

children as the fathers had done to them: but the deed was “worse than a

crime; it was a mistake.” The Danes of the Danelagh and of Northumbria,

their brothers of Denmark and Norway, the Orkneys and the east coast of

Ireland, remained unharmed. A mighty host of Vikings poured from thence

into England the very next year, under Swend Forkbeard and the great

Canute; and after thirteen fearful campaigns came the great battle of

Assingdown in Essex, where “Canute had the victory; and all the English

nation fought against him, and all the nobility of the English race was

there destroyed.”

That same year saw the mysterious death of Edmund Ironside, the last

man of Cerdic’s race worthy of the name. For the next twenty-five years,

Danish kings ruled from the Forth to the Land’s End.

A noble figure he was, that great and wise Canute, the friend of the

famous Godiva, and Leofric, Godiva’s husband, and Siward Biorn, the

conqueror of Macbeth; trying to expiate by justice and mercy the dark

deeds of his bloodstained youth; trying (and not in vain) to blend the

two races over which he ruled; rebuilding the churches and monasteries

which his father had destroyed; bringing back in state to Canterbury the

body of Archbishop Elphege--not unjustly called by the Saxons martyr

and saint--whom Tall Thorkill’s men had murdered with beef bones and

ox-skulls, because he would not give up to them the money destined

for God’s poor; rebuking, as every child has heard, his housecarles’

flattery by setting his chair on the brink of the rising tide; and then

laying his golden crown, in token of humility, on the high altar of

Winchester, never to wear it more. In Winchester lie his bones unto this

day, or what of them the civil wars have left: and by him lie the bones

of his son Hardicanute, in whom, as in his half-brother Harold Harefoot

before him, the Danish power fell to swift decay, by insolence and

drink and civil war; and with the Danish power England fell to pieces

likewise.

Canute had divided England into four great earldoms, each ruled, under

him, by a jarl, or earl--a Danish, not a Saxon title.

At his death in 1036, the earldoms of Northumbria and East Anglia--the

more strictly Danish parts--were held by a true Danish hero, Siward

Biorn, alias _Digre_ “the Stout”, conqueror of Macbeth, and son of the

Fairy Bear; proving his descent, men said, by his pointed and hairy

ears.

Mercia, the great central plateau of England, was held by Earl Leofric,

husband of the famous Lady Godiva.

Wessex, which Canute had at first kept in his own hands, had passed

into those of the famous Earl Godwin, the then ablest man in England.

Possessed of boundless tact and cunning, gifted with an eloquence which

seems, from the accounts remaining of it, to have been rather that of

a Greek than an Englishman; himself of high--perhaps of royal--Sussex

blood (for the story of his low birth seems a mere fable of his French

enemies), and married first to Canute’s sister, and then to his niece,

he was fitted, alike by fortunes and by talents, to be the king-maker

which he became.

Such a system may have worked well as long as the brain of a hero was

there to overlook it all. But when that brain was turned to dust, the

history of England became, till the Norman Conquest, little more than

the history of the rivalries of the two great houses of Godwin and

Leofric.

Leofric had the first success in king-making. He, though bearing a

Saxon name, was the champion of the Danish party and of Canute’s son,

or reputed son, Harold Harefoot; and he succeeded, by the help of the

“Thanes north of Thames,” and the “lithsmen of London,” which city

was more than half Danish in those days, in setting his puppet on the

throne. But the blood of Canute had exhausted itself. Within seven years

Harold Harefoot and Hardicanute, who succeeded him, had died as foully

as they lived; and Godwin’s turn had come.

He, though married to a Danish princess, and acknowledging his Danish

connection by the Norse names which were borne by his three most famous

sons, Harold, Sweyn, and Tostig, constituted himself the champion of

the men of Wessex and the house of Cerdic. He had murdered, or at least

caused to be murdered, horribly, Alfred the Etheling, King Ethelred’s

son and heir-apparent, when it seemed his interest to support the claims

of Hardicanute against Harefoot. He now found little difficulty in

persuading his victim’s younger brother to come to England, and become

at once his king, his son-in-law and his puppet.

Edward the Confessor, if we are to believe the monks whom he pampered,

was naught but virtue and piety, meekness and magnanimity,--a model

ruler of men. Such a model ruler he was, doubtless, as monks would be

glad to see on every throne; because while he rules his subjects,

they rule him. No wonder, therefore, that (according to William of

Malmesbury) the happiness of his times (famed as he was both for

miracles and the spirit of prophecy) “was revealed in a dream to

Brithwin, Bishop of Wilton, who made it public”; who, meditating in King

Canute’s time on “the near extinction of the royal race of the English,”

was “rapt up on high, and saw St. Peter consecrating Edward king. His

chaste life also was pointed out, and the exact period of his reign

(twenty-four years) determined; and, when inquiring about his posterity,

it was answered, ‘The kingdom of the English belongs to God. After you,

He will provide a king according to his pleasure.’” But those who will

look at the facts will see in the holy Confessor’s character little but

what is pitiable, and in his reign little but what is tragical.

Civil wars, invasions, outlawry of Godwin and his sons by the Danish

party; then of Alfgar, Leofric’s son, by the Saxon party; the outlaws on

either side attacking and plundering the English shores by the help of

Norsemen, Welshmen, Irish, and Danes,--any mercenaries who could be got

together; and then,--“In the same year Bishop Aldred consecrated the

minster at Gloucester to the glory of God and of St. Peter, and then

went to Jerusalem with such splendor as no man had displayed before

him”; and so forth. The sum and substance of what was done in those

“happy times” may be well described in the words of the Anglo-Saxon

chronicler for the year 1058. “This year Alfgar the earl was banished;

but he came in again with violence, through aid of Griffin (the king

of North Wales, his brother-in-law). And this year came a fleet from

Norway. It is tedious to tell how these matters went.” These were the

normal phenomena of a reign which seemed, to the eyes of monks, a

holy and a happy one; because the king refused, whether from spite or

superstition, to have an heir to the house of Cerdic, and spent his time

between prayer, hunting, the seeing of fancied visions, the uttering of

fancied prophecies, and the performance of fancied miracles.

But there were excuses for him. An Englishman only in name,--a

Norman, not only of his mother’s descent (she was aunt of William the

Conqueror), but by his early education on the Continent,--he loved the

Norman better than the Englishman; Norman knights and clerks filled his

court, and often the high dignities of his provinces, and returned as

often as expelled; the Norman-French language became fashionable;

Norman customs and manners the signs of civilization; and thus all was

preparing steadily for the great catastrophe, by which, within a year of

Edward’s death, the Norman became master of the land.

Perhaps it ought to have been so. Perhaps by no other method could

England, and, with England, Scotland, and in due time Ireland, have

become partakers of that classic civilization and learning, the fount

whereof, for good and for evil, was Rome and the Pope of Rome: but

the method was at least wicked; the actors in it tyrannous, brutal,

treacherous, hypocritical; and the conquest of England by William will

remain to the end of time a mighty crime, abetted--one may almost say

made possible, as too many such crimes have been before and since--by

the intriguing ambition of the Pope of Rome.

Against that tyranny the free men of the Danelagh and of Northumbria

rose. If Edward, the descendant of Cerdic, had been little to them,

William, the descendant of Rollo, was still less. That French-speaking

knights should expel them from their homes, French-chanting monks from

their convents, because Edward had promised the crown of England to

William, his foreign cousin, or because Harold Godwinsson of Wessex had

sworn on the relics of all the saints to be William’s man, was contrary

to their common-sense of right and reason.

So they rose and fought: too late, it may be, and without unity or

purpose; and they were worsted by an enemy who had both unity and

purpose; whom superstition, greed, and feudal discipline kept together,

at least in England, in one compact body of unscrupulous and terrible

confederates.

But theirs was a land worth fighting for,--a good land and large: from

Humber mouth inland to the Trent and merry Sherwood, across to Chester

and the Dee, round by Leicester and the five burghs of the Danes;

eastward again to Huntingdon and Cambridge (then a poor village on the

site of an old Roman town); and then northward again into the wide

fens, the land of the Girvii and the Eormingas, “the children of the

peat-bog,” where the great central plateau of England slides into the

sea, to form, from the rain and river washings of eight shires, lowlands

of a fertility inexhaustible, because ever-growing to this day.

They have a beauty of their own, these great fens, even now, when they

are diked and drained, tilled and fenced,--a beauty as of the sea, of

boundless expanse and freedom. Much more had they that beauty eight

hundred years ago, when they were still, for the most part, as God had

made them, or rather was making them even then. The low rolling uplands

were clothed in primeval forest: oak and ash, beech and elm, with here

and there, perhaps, a group of ancient pines, ragged and decayed, and

fast dying out in England even then; though lingering still in the

forests of the Scotch highlands.

Between the forests were open wolds, dotted with white sheep and golden

gorse; rolling plains of rich though ragged turf, whether cleared by the

hand of man or by the wild fires which often swept over the hills.

And between the wood and the wold stood many a Danish “town,” with its

clusters of low straggling buildings round the holder’s house, stone or

mud below, and wood above; its high dikes round tiny fields; its flocks

of sheep ranging on the wold; its herds of swine in the forest; and

below, a more precious possession still,--its herds of mares and colts,

which fed with the cattle in the rich grass-fen.

For always, from the foot of the wolds, the green flat stretched away,

illimitable, to an horizon where, from the roundness of the earth, the

distant trees and islands were hulled down like ships at sea. The firm

horse-fen lay, bright green, along the foot of the wold; beyond it, the

browner peat, or deep fen; and among it, dark velvet alder beds, long

lines of reed-rond, emerald in spring, and golden under the autumn sun;

shining river-reaches; broad meres dotted with a million fowl, while the

cattle waded along their edges after the rich sedge-grass, or wallowed

in the mire through the hot summer’s day. Here and there, too, upon the

far horizon, rose a tall line of ashen trees, marking some island of

firm rich soil. Here and there, too, as at Ramsey and Crowland, the huge

ashes had disappeared before the axes of the monks, and a minster tower

rose over the fen, amid orchards, gardens, cornfields, pastures, with

here and there a tree left standing for shade. “Painted with flowers

in the spring,” with “pleasant shores embosomed in still lakes,” as the

monk-chronicler of Ramsey has it, those islands seemed to such as the

monk terrestrial paradises.

Overhead the arch of heaven spread more ample than elsewhere, as over

the open sea; and that vastness gave, and still gives, such “effects”

of cloudland, of sunrise, and sunset, as can be seen nowhere else within

these isles. They might well have been star worshippers, those Girvii,

had their sky been as clear as that of the East: but they were like to

have worshipped the clouds rather than the stars, according to the

too universal law, that mankind worship the powers which do them harm,

rather than the powers which do them good.

And therefore the Danelagh men, who feared not mortal sword, or axe,

feared witches, ghosts, Pucks, Will-o’-the-Wisps, werewolves, spirits of

the wells and of the trees, and all dark, capricious, and harmful beings

whom their fancy conjured up out of the wild, wet, and unwholesome

marshes, or the dark wolf-haunted woods. For that fair land, like all

things on earth, had its darker aspect. The foul exhalations of autumn

called up fever and ague, crippling and enervating, and tempting,

almost compelling, to that wild and desperate drinking which was the

Scandinavian’s special sin. Dark and sad were those short autumn days,

when all the distances were shut off, and the air choked with foul

brown fog and drenching rains from off the eastern sea; and pleasant

the bursting forth of the keen north-east wind, with all its whirling

snowstorms. For though it sent men hurrying out into the storm, to drive

the cattle in from the fen, and lift the sheep out of the snow-wreaths,

and now and then never to return, lost in mist and mire, in ice and

snow;--yet all knew that after the snow would come the keen frost and

the bright sun and cloudless blue sky, and the fenman’s yearly holiday,

when, work being impossible, all gave themselves up to play, and swarmed

upon the ice on skates and sledges, and ran races, township against

township, or visited old friends full forty miles away; and met

everywhere faces as bright and ruddy as their own, cheered by the keen

wine of that dry and bracing frost.

Such was the Fenland; hard, yet cheerful; rearing a race of hard and

cheerful men; showing their power in old times in valiant fighting, and

for many a century since in that valiant industry which has drained and

embanked the land of the Girvii, till it has become a very “Garden

of the Lord.” And the Scotsman who may look from the promontory of

Peterborough, the “golden borough” of old time; or from the tower of

Crowland, while Hereward and Torfrida sleep in the ruined nave beneath;

or from the heights of that Isle of Ely which was so long “the camp of

refuge” for English freedom; over the labyrinth of dikes and lodes, the

squares of rich corn and verdure,--will confess that the lowland, as

well as the highland, can at times breed gallant men. [Footnote: The

story of Hereward (often sung by minstrels and old-wives in succeeding

generations) may be found in the “Metrical Chronicle of Geoffrey

Gaimar,” and in the prose “Life of Hereward” (paraphrased from that

written by Leofric, his house-priest), and in the valuable fragment

“Of the family of Hereward.” These have all three been edited by Mr.

T. Wright. The account of Hereward in Ingulf seems taken, and that

carelessly, from the same source as the Latin prose, “De Gestis

Herewardi.” A few curious details may be found in Peter of Blois’s

continuation of Ingulf; and more, concerning the sack of Peterborough,

in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. I have followed the contemporary

authorities as closely as I could, introducing little but what was

necessary to reconcile discrepancies, or to illustrate the history,

manners, and sentiments of the time.--C. K.]

CHAPTER I.

HOW HEREWARD WAS OUTLAWED, AND WENT NORTH TO SEEK HIS FORTUNES.

Known to all is Lady Godiva, the most beautiful as well as the most

saintly woman of her day; who, “all her life, kept at her own expense

thirteen poor folk wherever she went; who, throughout Lent, watched in

the church at triple matins, namely, one for the Trinity, one for the

Cross, and one for St. Mary; who every day read the Psalter through, and

so persevered in good and holy works to her life’s end,”--the “devoted

friend of St. Mary, ever a virgin,” who enriched monasteries without

number,--Leominster, Wenlock, Chester, St. Mary’s Stow by Lincoln,

Worcester, Evesham; and who, above all, founded the great monastery in

that town of Coventry, which has made her name immortal for another and

a far nobler deed; and enriched it so much “that no monastery in England

possessed such abundance of gold, silver, jewels, and precious stones,”

beside that most precious jewel of all, the arm of St. Augustine, which

not Lady Godiva, but her friend, Archbishop Ethelnoth, presented to

Coventry, “having bought it at Pavia for a hundred talents of silver and

a talent of gold.” [Footnote: William of Malmesbury.]

Less known, save to students, is her husband, Leofric the great Earl

of Mercia and Chester, whose bones lie by those of Godiva in that same

minster of Coventry; how “his counsel was as if one had opened the

Divine oracles”; very “wise,” says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, “for

God and for the world, which was a blessing to all this nation”; the

greatest man, save his still greater rival, Earl Godwin, in Edward the

Confessor’s court.

Less known, again, are the children of that illustrious pair: Algar,

or Alfgar, Earl of Mercia after his father, who died, after a short and

stormy life, leaving two sons, Edwin and Morcar, the fair and hapless

young earls, always spoken of together, as if they had been twins; a

daughter, Aldytha, or Elfgiva, married first (according to some) to

Griffin, King of North Wales, and certainly afterwards to Harold, King

of England; and another, Lucia (as the Normans at least called her),

whose fate was, if possible, more sad than that of her brothers.

Their second son was Hereward, whose history this tale sets forth; their

third and youngest, a boy whose name is unknown.

They had, probably, another daughter beside; married, it may be, to

some son of Leofric’s stanch friend old Siward Biorn, the Viking Earl of

Northumberland, and conqueror of Macbeth; and the mother, may be, of the

two young Siwards, the “white” and the “red,” who figure in chronicle

and legend as the nephews of Hereward. But this pedigree is little more

than a conjecture.

Be these things as they may, Godiva was the greatest lady in England,

save two: Edith, Harold’s sister, the nominal wife of Edward the

Confessor; and Githa, or Gyda, as her own Danes called her, Harold’s

mother, niece of Canute the Great. Great was Godiva; and might have been

proud enough, had she been inclined to that pleasant sin. And even then

(for there is a skeleton, they say, in every house) she carried that

about her which might well keep her humble; namely, shame at the

misconduct of Hereward, her son.

Her favorite residence, among the many manors and “villas,” or farms

which Leofric possessed, was neither the stately hall at Loughton by

Bridgenorth, nor the statelier castle of Warwick, but the house of

Bourne in South Lincolnshire, between the great woods of the Bruneswald

and the great level of the fens. It may have been her own paternal

dowry, and have come down to her in right of her Danish ancestors,

and that great and “magnificent” Jarl Oslac, from whom she derived her

all-but-royal blood. This is certain, that Leofric, her husband, went

in East Anglia by the name of Leofric, Lord of Bourne; that, as Domesday

Book testifies, his son Alfgar, and his grandson Morcar, held large

lands there and thereabout. Alfgar’s name, indeed, still lives in the

village of Algar-Kirk; and Lady Godiva, and Algar after her, enriched

with great gifts Crowland, the island sanctuary, and Peterborough, where

Brand, either her brother or Leofric’s, was a monk, and in due time an

abbot.

The house of Bourne, as far as it can be reconstructed by imagination,

was altogether unlike one of the tall and gloomy Norman castles which

twenty years later reared their evil donjons over England. It was much

more like a house in a Chinese painting; an irregular group of low

buildings, almost all of one story, stone below and timber above, with

high-peaked roofs,--at least in the more Danish country,--affording a

separate room, or rather house, for each different need of the family.

Such a one may be seen in the illuminations of the century. In the

centre of the building is the hall, with door or doors opening out into

the court; and sitting thereat, at the top of a flight of steps, the

lord and lady, dealing clothes to the naked and bread to the hungry. On

one side of the hall is a chapel; by it a large room or “bower” for the

ladies; behind the hall a round tower, seemingly the strong place of

the whole house; on the other side a kitchen; and stuck on to bower,

kitchen, and every other principal building, lean-to after lean-to, the

uses of which it is impossible now to discover. The house had grown with

the wants of the family,--as many good old English houses have done to

this day. Round it would be scattered barns and stables, in which grooms

and herdsmen slept side by side with their own horses and cattle; and

outside all, the “yard,” “garth,” or garden-fence, high earth-bank with

palisades on top, which formed a strong defence in time of war. Such was

most probably the “villa,” “ton,” or “town” of Earl Leofric, the Lord

of Bourne, the favorite residence of Godiva,--once most beautiful, and

still most holy, according to the holiness of those old times.

Now on a day--about the year 1054--while Earl Siward was helping to

bring Birnam wood to Dunsinane, to avenge his murdered brother-in-law,

Lady Godiva sat, not at her hall door, dealing food and clothing to

her thirteen poor folk, but in her bower, with her youngest son, a

two-years’ boy, at her knee. She was listening with a face of shame and

horror to the complaint of Herluin, Steward of Peterborough, who had

fallen in that afternoon with Hereward and his crew of “housecarles.”

To keep a following of stout housecarles, or men-at-arms, was the pride

as well as the duty of an Anglo-Danish Lord, as it was, till lately, of

a Scoto-Danish Highland Laird. And Hereward, in imitation of his father

and his elder brother, must needs have his following from the time he

was but fifteen years old. All the unruly youths of the neighborhood,

sons of free “holders,” who owed some sort of military service to Earl

Leofric; Geri, his cousin; Winter, whom he called his brother-in-arms;

the Wulfrics, the Wulfards, the Azers, and many another wild blade, had

banded themselves round a young nobleman more unruly than themselves.

Their names were already a terror to all decent folk, at wakes and

fairs, alehouses and village sports. They atoned, be it remembered, for

their early sins by making those names in after years a terror to the

invaders of their native land: but as yet their prowess was limited to

drunken brawls and faction-fights; to upsetting old women at their work,

levying blackmail from quiet chapmen on the high road, or bringing back

in triumph, sword in hand and club on shoulder, their leader Hereward

from some duel which his insolence had provoked.

But this time, if the story of the sub-prior was to be believed,

Hereward and his housecarles had taken an ugly stride forward toward the

pit. They had met him riding along, intent upon his psalter, in a lonely

path of the Bruneswald,--“Whereon your son, most gracious lady, bade me

stand, saying that his men were thirsty and he had no money to buy ale

withal, and none so likely to help him thereto as a fat priest,--for so

he scandalously termed me, who, as your ladyship knows, am leaner than

the minster bell-ropes, with fasting Wednesdays and Fridays throughout

the year, beside the vigils of the saints, and the former and latter

Lents.

“But when he saw who I was, as if inspired by a malignant spirit, he

shouted out my name, and bade his companions throw me to the ground.”

“Throw you to the ground?” shuddered the Lady Godiva.

“In much mire, madam. After which he took my palfrey, saying that

heaven’s gate was too lowly for men on horseback to get in thereat; and

then my marten’s fur gloves and cape which your gracious self bestowed

on me, alleging that the rules of my order allowed only one garment,

and no furs save catskins and such like. And lastly--I tremble while I

relate, thinking not of the loss of my poor money, but the loss of an

immortal soul--took from me a purse with sixteen silver pennies, which

I had collected from our tenants for the use of the monastery, and said,

blasphemously, that I and mine had swindled your ladyship, and therefore

him, your son, out of many a fair manor ere now; and it was but fair

that he should tithe the rents thereof, as he should never get the

lands out of our claws again; with more of the like, which I blush to

repeat,--and so left me to trudge hither in the mire.”

“Wretched boy!” said the Lady Godiva, and hid her face in her hands;

“and more wretched I, to have brought such a son into the world!”

The monk had hardly finished his doleful story, when there was a

pattering of heavy feet, a noise of men shouting and laughing outside,

and a voice, above all, calling for the monk by name, which made that

good man crouch behind the curtain of Lady Godiva’s bed. The next moment

the door of the bower was thrown violently open, and in walked,

or rather reeled, a noble lad eighteen years old. His face was of

extraordinary beauty, save that the lower jaw was too long and heavy,

and that his eyes wore a strange and almost sinister expression, from

the fact that the one of them was gray and the other blue. He was short,

but of immense breadth of chest and strength of limb; while his delicate

hands and feet and long locks of golden hair marked him of most noble,

and even, as he really was, of ancient royal race. He was dressed in a

gaudy costume, resembling on the whole that of a Highland chieftain. His

knees, wrists, and throat were tattoed in bright blue patterns; and he

carried sword and dagger, a gold ring round his neck, and gold rings on

his wrists. He was a lad to have gladdened the eyes of any mother: but

there was no gladness in the Lady Godiva’s eyes as she received him; nor

had there been for many a year. She looked on him with sternness,--with

all but horror; and he, his face flushed with wine, which he had tossed

off as he passed through the hall to steady his nerves for the

coming storm, looked at her with smiling defiance, the result of long

estrangement between mother and son.

“Well, my lady,” said he, ere she could speak, “I heard that this good

fellow was here, and came home as fast as I could, to see that he told

you as few lies as possible.”

“He has told me,” said she, “that you have robbed the Church of God.”

“Robbed him, it may be, an old hoody crow, against whom I have a grudge

of ten years’ standing.”

“Wretched, wretched boy! What wickedness next? Know you not, that he who

robs the Church robs God himself?”

“And he who harms God’s people,” put in the monk from behind the chair,

“harms his Maker.”

“His Maker?” said the lad, with concentrated bitterness. “It would be a

gay world, if the Maker thereof were in any way like unto you, who

call yourselves his people. Do you remember who told them to set the

peat-stack on fire under me ten years ago? Ah, ha, Sir Monk, you forget

that I have been behind the screen,--that I have been a monk myself, or

should have been one, if my pious lady mother here had had her will

of me, as she may if she likes of that doll there at her knee. Do you

forget why I left Peterborough Abbey, when Winter and I turned all your

priest’s books upside down in the choir, and they would have flogged

us,--me, the Earl’s son,--me, the Viking’s son,--me, the champion, as I

will be yet, and make all lands ring with the fame of my deeds, as they

rung with the fame of my forefathers, before they became the slaves of

monks; and how when Winter and I got hold of the kitchen spits, and up

to the top of the peat-stack, and held you all at bay there, a whole

abbeyful of cowards there, against two seven years’ children? It was you

bade set the peat-stack alight under us, and so bring us down; and would

have done it, too, had it not been for my Uncle Brand, the only man that

I care for in this wide world. Do you think I have not owed you a grudge

ever since that day, monk? And do you think I will not pay it? Do you

think I would not have burned Peterborough minster over your head before

now, had it not been for Uncle Brand’s sake? See that I do not do it

yet. See that when there is another Prior in Borough you do not find

Hereward the Berserker smoking you out some dark night, as he would

smoke a wasps’ nest. And I will, by--”

“Hereward, Hereward!” cried his mother, “godless, god-forgotten boy,

what words are these? Silence, before you burden your soul with an oath

which the devils in hell will accept, and force you to keep!” and she

sprung up, and, seizing his arm, laid her hand upon his mouth.

Hereward looked at her majestic face, once lovely, now careworn, and

trembled for a moment. Had there been any tenderness in it, his history

might have been a very different one; but alas! there was none. Not

that she was in herself untender; but that her great piety (call it not

superstition, for it was then the only form known or possible to pure

and devout souls) was so outraged by this, or even by the slightest

insult to that clergy whose willing slave she had become, that the only

method of reclaiming the sinner had been long forgotten, in genuine

horror at his sin. “Is it not enough,” she went on, sternly, “that you

should have become the bully and the ruffian of all the fens?--that

Hereward the leaper, Hereward the wrestler, Hereward the thrower of the

hammer--sports, after all, only fit for the sons of slaves--should be

also Hereward the drunkard, Hereward the common fighter, Hereward the

breaker of houses, Hereward the leader of mobs of boon companions

which bring back to us, in shame and sorrow, the days when our heathen

forefathers ravaged this land with fire and sword? Is it not enough for

me that my son should be a common stabber--?”

“Whoever called me stabber to you, lies. If I have killed men, or had

them killed, I have done it in fair fight.”

But she went on unheeding,--“Is it not enough, that, after having

squandered on your fellows all the money that you could wring from my

bounty, or win at your brutal sports, you should have robbed your own

father, collected his rents behind his back, taken money and goods from

his tenants by threats and blows; but that, after outraging them, you

must add to all this a worse sin likewise,--outraging God, and driving

me--me who have borne with you, me who have concealed all for your

sake--to tell your father that of which the very telling will turn my

hair to gray?”

“So you will tell my father?” said Hereward, coolly.

“And if I should not, this monk himself is bound to do so, or his

superior, your Uncle Brand.”

“My Uncle Brand will not, and your monk dare not.”

“Then I must. I have loved you long and well; but there is one thing

which I must love better than you: and that is, my conscience and my

Maker.”

“Those are two things, my lady mother, and not one; so you had better

not confound them. As for the latter, do you not think that He who made

the world is well able to defend his own property,--if the lands and

houses and cattle and money which these men wheedle and threaten and

forge out of you and my father are really His property, and not merely

their plunder? As for your conscience, my lady mother, really you have

done so many good deeds in your life, that it might be beneficial to you

to do a bad one once in a way, so as to keep your soul in a wholesome

state of humility.”

The monk groaned aloud. Lady Godiva groaned; but it was inwardly.

There was silence for a moment. Both were abashed by the lad’s utter

shamelessness.

“And you will tell my father?” said he again. “He is at the old

miracle-worker’s court at Westminster. He will tell the miracle-worker,

and I shall be outlawed.”

“And if you be, wretched boy, whom have you to blame but yourself? Can

you expect that the king, sainted even as he is before his death, dare

pass over such an atrocity towards Holy Church?”

“Blame? I shall blame no one. Pass over? I hope he will not

pass over it, I only want an excuse like that for turning

kempery-man--knight-errant, as those Norman puppies call it,--like

Regnar Lodbrog, or Frithiof, or Harold Hardraade; and try what man

can do for himself in the world with nothing to help him in heaven and

earth, with neither saint nor angel, friend or counsellor, to see to

him, save his wits and his good sword. So send off the messenger, good

mother mine: and I will promise you I will not have him ham-strung on

the way, as some of my housecarles would do for me if I but held up my

hand; and let the miracle-monger fill up the measure of his folly, by

making an enemy of one more bold fellow in the world.”

And he swaggered out of the room.

And when he was gone, the Lady Godiva bowed her head into her lap and

wept long and bitterly. Neither her maidens nor the priest dare speak

to her for nigh an hour; but at the end of that time she lifted up her

head, and settled her face again, till it was like that of a marble

saint over a minster door; and called for ink and paper, and wrote her

letter; and then asked for a trusty messenger who should carry it up to

Westminster.

“None so swift or sure,” said the house steward, “as Martin Lightfoot.”

Lady Godiva shook her head. “I mistrust that man,” she said. “He is too

fond of my poor--of the Lord Hereward.”

“He is a strange one, my lady, and no one knows whence he came, and,

I sometimes fancy, whither he may go either; but ever since my lord

threatened to hang him for talking with my young master, he has never

spoken to him, nor scarcely, indeed, to living soul. And one thing there

is makes him or any man sure, as long as he is well paid; and that is,

that he cares for nothing in heaven or earth save himself and what he

can get.”

So Martin Lightfoot was sent for. He came in straight into the lady’s

bedchamber, after the simple fashion of those days. He was a tall, lean,

bony man, as was to be expected from his nickname, with a long hooked

nose, a scanty brown beard, and a high conical head. His only garment

was a shabby gray woollen tunic, which served him both as coat and kilt,

and laced brogues of untanned hide. He might have been any age from

twenty to forty; but his face was disfigured with deep scars and long

exposure to the weather. He dropped on one knee, holding his greasy cap

in his hand, and looked, not at his lady’s face, but at her feet, with a

stupid and frightened expression. She knew very little of him, save

that her husband had picked him up upon the road as a wanderer some five

years since; and that he had been employed as a doer of odd jobs and

runner of messages, and that he was supposed, from his taciturnity and

strangeness, to have something uncanny about him.

“Martin,” said the lady, “they tell me that you are a silent and a

prudent man.”

“That am I. ‘Tongue speaketh bane,

Though she herself hath nane.’”

“I shall try you: do you know your way to London?”

“Yes.”

“To your lord’s lodgings in Westminster?”

“Yes.”

“How long shall you be going there with this letter?”

“A day and a half.”

“When shall you be back hither?”

“On the fourth day.”

“And you will go to my lord and deliver this letter safely?”

“Yes, your Majesty.”

“Why do you call me Majesty? The King is Majesty.”

“You are my Queen.”

“What do you mean, man?”

“You can hang me.”

“I hang thee, poor soul! Who did I ever hang, or hurt for a moment, if I

could help it?”

“But the Earl may.”

“He will neither hang nor hurt thee if thou wilt take this letter

safely, and bring me back the answer safely.”

“They will kill me.”

“Who?”

“They,” said Martin, pointing to the bower maidens,--young ladies of

good family who stood round, chosen for their good looks, after the

fashion of those times, to attend on great ladies. There was a cry of

angry and contemptuous denial, not unmixed with something like laughter,

which showed that Martin had but spoken the truth. Hereward, in spite of

all his sins, was the darling of his mother’s bower; and there was not

one of the damsels but would have done anything short of murder to have

prevented Martin carrying the letter.

“Silence, man!” said Lady Godiva, so sternly that Martin saw that he had

gone too far. “How know’st such as thou what is in this letter?”

“Those others will know,” said Martin, sullenly, without answering the

last question.

“Who?”

“His housecarles outside there.”

“He has promised that they shall not touch thee. But how knowest thou

what is in this letter?”

“I will take it,” said Martin: he held out his hand, took it and looked

at it, but upside down, and without any attempt to read it.

“His own mother,” said he, after a while.

“What is that to thee?” said Lady Godiva, blushing and kindling.

“Nothing: I had no mother. But God has one!”

“What meanest thou, knave? Wilt thou take the letter or no?”

“I will take it.” And he again looked at it without rising off his knee.

“His own father, too.”

“What is that to thee, I say again?”

“Nothing: I have no father. But God’s Son has one!”

“What wilt thou, thou strange man?” asked she, puzzled and

half-frightened; “and how camest thou to know what is in this letter?”

“Who does not know? A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. On the

fourth day from this I will be back.”

And Martin rose, and putting the letter solemnly into the purse at his

girdle, shot out of the door with clenched teeth, as a man upon a fixed

purpose which it would lighten his heart to carry out. He ran rapidly

through the large outer hall, past the long oak table, at which Hereward

and his boon companions were drinking and roistering; and as he passed

the young lord he cast on him a look so full of meaning, that though

Hereward knew not what the meaning was, it startled him, and for a

moment softened him. Did this man who had sullenly avoided him for more

than two years, whom he had looked on as a clod or a post in the field

beneath his notice, since he could be of no use to him,--did this man

still care for him? Hereward had reason to know better than most that

there was something strange and uncanny about the man. Did he mean him

well? Or had he some grudge against him, which made him undertake this

journey willingly and out of spite?--possibly with the will to make bad

worse. For an instant Hereward’s heart misgave him. He would stop the

letter at all risks. “Hold him!” he cried to his comrades.

But Martin turned to him, laid his finger on his lips, smiled kindly,

and saying “You promised!” caught up a loaf from the table, slipped

from among them like an eel, and darted out of the door, and out of

the close. They followed him to the great gate, and there stopped, some

cursing, some laughing. To give Martin Lightfoot a yard advantage was

never to come up with him again. Some called for bows to bring him

down with a parting shot. But Hereward forbade them; and stood leaning

against the gate-post, watching him trot on like a lean wolf over the

lawn, till he was lost in the great elm-woods which fringed the southern

fen.

“Now, lads,” said Hereward, “home with you all, and make your peace with

your fathers. In this house you never drink ale again.”

They looked at him, surprised.

“You are disbanded, my gallant army. As long as I could cut long thongs

out of other men’s hides, I could feed you like earl’s sons: but now I

must feed myself; and a dog over his bone wants no company. Outlawed I

shall be before the week is out; and unless you wish to be outlawed too,

you will obey orders, and home.”

“We will follow you to the world’s end,” cried some.

“To the rope’s end, lads: that is all you will get in my company. Go

home with you, and those who feel a calling, let them turn monks; and

those who have not, let them learn

‘For to plough and to sow,

And to reap and to mow,

And to be a farmer’s boy.’

Good night.”

And he went in, and shut the great gates after him, leaving them

astonished.

To take his advice, and go home, was the simplest thing to be done. A

few of them on their return were soundly thrashed, and deserved it;

a few were hidden by their mothers for a week, in hay-lofts and

hen-roosts, till their father’s anger had passed away. But only one

turned monk or clerk, and that was Leofric the Unlucky, godson of the

great earl, and poet-in-ordinary to the band.

The next morning at dawn Hereward mounted his best horse, armed himself

from head to foot, and rode over to Peterborough.

When he came to the abbey-gate, he smote thereon with his lance-but,

till the porter’s teeth rattled in his head for fear.

“Let me in!” he shouted. “I am Hereward Leofricsson. I must see my Uncle

Brand.”

“O my most gracious lord!” cried the porter, thrusting his head out of

the wicket, “what is this that you have been doing to our Steward?”

“The tithe of what I will do, unless you open the gate!”

“O my lord!” said the porter, as he opened it, “if our Lady and St.

Peter would but have mercy on your fair face, and convert your soul to

the fear of God and man--”

“She would make me as good an old fool as you. Fetch my uncle, the

Prior.”

The porter obeyed. The son of Earl Leofric was as a young lion among the

sheep in those parts; and few dare say him nay, certainly not the

monks of Peterborough; moreover, the good porter could not help being

strangely fond of Hereward--as was every one whom he did not insult,

rob, or kill.

Out came Brand, a noble elder: more fit, from his eye and gait, to be a

knight than a monk. He looked sadly at Hereward.

“‘Dear is bought the honey that is licked off the thorn,’ quoth

Hending,” said he.

“Hending bought his wisdom by experience, I suppose,” said Hereward,

“and so must I. So I am just starting out to see the world, uncle.”

“Naughty, naughty boy! If we had thee safe here again for a week, we

would take this hot blood out of thee, and send thee home in thy right

mind.”

“Bring a rod and whip me, then. Try, and you shall have your chance.

Every one else has had, and this is the end of their labors.”

“By the chains of St. Peter,” quoth the monk, “that is just what thou

needest. Hoist thee on such another fool’s back, truss thee up, and lay

it on lustily, till thou art ashamed. To treat thee as a man is only to

make thee a more heady blown-up ass than thou art already.”

“True, most wise uncle. And therefore my still wiser parents are going

to treat me like a man indeed, and send me out into the world to seek my

fortunes!”

“Eh?”

“They are going to prove how thoroughly they trust me to take care of

myself, by outlawing me. Eh? say I in return. Is not that an honor,

and a proof that I have not shown myself a fool, though I may have a

madman?”

“Outlaw you? O my boy, my darling, my pride! Get off your horse, and

don’t sit there, hand on hip, like a turbaned Saracen, defying God and

man; but come down and talk reason to me, for the sake of St. Peter and

all saints.”

Hereward threw himself off his horse, and threw his arms round his

uncle’s neck.

“Pish! Now, uncle, don’t cry, do what you will, lest I cry too. Help me

to be a man while I live, even if I go to the black place when I die.”

“It shall not be!” .... and the monk swore by all the relics in

Peterborough minster.

“It must be. It shall be. I like to be outlawed. I want to be outlawed.

It makes one feel like a man. There is not an earl in England, save my

father, who has not been outlawed in his time. My brother Alfgar will be

outlawed before he dies, if he has the spirit of a man in him. It is the

fashion, my uncle, and I must follow it. So hey for the merry greenwood,

and the long ships, and the swan’s bath, and all the rest of it. Uncle,

you will lend me fifty silver pennies?”

“I? I would not lend thee one, if I had it, which I have not. And yet,

old fool that I am, I believe I would.”

“I would pay thee back honestly. I shall go down to Constantinople to

the Varangers, get my Polotaswarf [Footnote: See “The Heimskringla,”

Harold Hardraade’s Saga, for the meaning of this word.] out of the

Kaiser’s treasure, and pay thee back five to one.”

“What does this son of Belial here?” asked an austere voice.

“Ah! Abbot Leofric, my very good lord. I have come to ask hospitality of

you for some three days. By that time I shall be a wolf’s head, and out

of the law: and then, if you will give me ten minutes’ start, you may

put your bloodhounds on my track, and see which runs fastest, they or

I. You are a gentleman, and a man of honor; so I trust to you to feed my

horse fairly the meanwhile, and not to let your monks poison me.”

The Abbot’s face relaxed. He tried to look as solemn as he could; but he

ended in bursting into a very great laughter, and swearing likewise.

“The insolence of this lad passes the miracles of all saints. He robs

St. Peter on the highway, breaks into his abbey, insults him to his

face, and then asks him for hospitality; and--”

“And gets it,” quoth Hereward.

“What is to be done with him, Brand, my friend? If we turn him out--”

“Which we cannot do,” said Brand, looking at the well-mailed and armed

lad, “without calling in half a dozen of our men-at-arms.”

“In which case there would be blood shed, and scandal made in the holy

precincts.”

“And nothing gained; for yield he would not till he was killed outright,

which God forbid!”

“Amen. And if he stay here, he may be persuaded to repentance.”

“And restitution.”

“As for that,” quoth Hereward (who had remounted his horse from

prudential motives, and set him athwart the gateway, so that there was

no chance of the doors being slammed behind him), “if either of you will

lend me sixteen pence, I will pay it back to you and St. Peter before I

die, with interest enough to satisfy any Jew, on the word of a gentleman

and an earl’s son.”

The Abbot burst again into a great laughter. “Come in, thou graceless

renegade, and we will see to thee and thy horse; and I will pray to St.

Peter; and I doubt not he will have patience with thee, for he is very

merciful; and after all, thy parents have been exceeding good to us, and

the righteousness of the father, like his sins, is sometimes visited on

the children.”

Now, why were the two ecclesiastics so uncanonically kind to this wicked

youth?

Perhaps because both the old bachelors were wishing from their hearts

that they had just such a son of their own. And beside, Earl Leofric

was a very great man indeed; and the wind might change; for it is an

unstable world.

“Only, mind, one thing,” said the naughty boy, as he dismounted, and

halloed to a lay-brother to see to his horse,--“don’t let me see the

face of that Herluin.”

“And why? You have wronged him, and he will forgive you, doubtless, like

a good Christian as he is.”

“That is his concern. But if I see him, I cut off his head. And, as

Uncle Brand knows, I always sleep with my sword under my pillow.”

“O that such a mother should have borne such a son.” groaned the Abbot,

as they went in.

On the fifth day came Martin Lightfoot, and found Hereward in Prior

Brand’s private cell.

“Well?” asked Hereward coolly.

“Is he--? Is he--?” stammered Brand, and could not finish his sentence.

Martin nodded.

Hereward laughed,--a loud, swaggering, hysterical laugh.

“See what it is to be born of just and pious parents. Come, Master

Trot-alone, speak out and tell us all about it. Thy lean wolf’s legs

have run to some purpose. Open thy lean wolf’s mouth and speak for once,

lest I ease thy legs for the rest of thy life by a cut across the hams.

Find thy lost tongue, I say!”

“Walls have ears, as well as the wild-wood,” said Martin.

“We are safe here,” said the Prior; “so speak, and tell us the whole

truth.”

“Well, when the Earl read the letter, he turned red, and pale again,

and then naught but, ‘Men, follow me to the King at Westminster.’ So

we went, all with our weapons, twenty or more, along the Strand, and up

into the King’s new hall; and a grand hall it is, but not easy to get

into, for the crowd of monks and beggars on the stairs, hindering honest

folks’ business. And there sat the King on a high settle, with his pink

face and white hair, looking as royal as a bell-wether new washed; and

on either side of him, on the same settle, sat the old fox and the young

wolf.”

“Godwin and Harold? And where was the Queen?”

“Sitting on a stool at his feet, with her hands together as if she

were praying, and her eyes downcast, as demure as any cat. And so is

fulfilled the story, how the sheep-dog went out to get married, and left

the fox, the wolf, and the cat to guard the flock.”

“If thou hast found thy tongue,” said Brand, “thou art like enough to

lose it again by slice of knife, talking such ribaldry of dignities.

Dost not know”--and he sank his voice--“that Abbot Leofric is Earl

Harold’s man, and that Harold himself made him abbot?”

“I said, walls have ears. It was you who told me that we were safe.

However, I will bridle the unruly one.” And he went on. “And your father

walked up the hall, his left hand on his sword-hilt, looking an earl all

over, as he is.”

“He is that,” said Hereward, in a low voice.

“And he bowed; and the most magnificent, powerful, and virtuous Godwin

would have beckoned him up to sit on the high settle; but he looked

straight at the King, as if there were never a Godwin or a Godwinsson on

earth, and cried as he stood,--

“‘Justice, my Lord the King!’

“And at that the King turned pale, and said, ‘Who? What? O miserable

world! O last days drawing nearer and nearer! O earth, full of violence

and blood! Who has wronged thee now, most dear and noble Earl?’

“‘Justice against my own son.’

“At that the fox looked at the wolf, and the wolf at the fox; and if

they did not smile it was not for want of will, I warrant. But your

father went on, and told all his story; and when he came to your

robbing master monk,--‘O apostate!’ cries the bell-wether, ‘O spawn of

Beelzebub! excommunicate him, with bell, book, and candle. May he be

thrust down with Korah, Balaam, and Iscariot, to the most Stygian pot of

the sempiternal Tartarus.’

“And at that your father smiled. ‘That is bishops’ work,’ says he; ‘and

I want king’s work from you, Lord King. Outlaw me this young rebel’s

sinful body, as by law you can; and leave his sinful soul to the

priests,--or to God’s mercy, which is like to be more than theirs.’

“Then the Queen looked up. ‘Your own son, noble Earl? Think of what you

are doing, and one whom all say is so gallant and so fair. O persuade

him, father,--persuade him, Harold my brother,--or, if you cannot

persuade him, persuade the King at least, and save this poor youth from

exile.’”

“Puss Velvet-paw knew well enough,” said Hereward, in a low voice, “that

the way to harden my father’s heart was to set Godwin and Harold on

softening it. They ask my pardon from the King? I would not take it at

their asking, even if my father would.”

“There spoke a true Leofricsson,” said Brand, in spite of himself.

“‘By the--’” (and Martin repeated a certain very solemn oath), “said

your father, ‘justice I will have, my Lord King. Who talks to me of my

own son? You put me into my earldom to see justice done and law obeyed;

and how shall I make others keep within bound if I am not to keep in my

own flesh and blood? Here is this land running headlong to ruin, because

every nobleman--ay, every churl who owns a manor, if he dares--must

needs arm and saddle, and levy war on his own behalf, and harry and slay

the king’s lieges, if he have not garlic to his roast goose every time

he chooses,’--and there your father did look at Godwin, once and for

all;--‘and shall I let my son follow the fashion, and do his best to

leave the land open and weak for Norseman, or Dane, or Frenchman, or

whoever else hopes next to mount the throne of a king who is too holy to

leave an heir behind him?’”

“Ahoi! Martin the silent! Where learnt you so suddenly the trade of

preaching? I thought you kept your wind for your running this two years

past. You would make as good a talker among the Witan as Godwin himself.

You give it us all, word for word, and voice and gesture withal, as if

you were King Edward’s French Chancellor.”

Martin smiled. “I am like Falada the horse, my lords, who could only

speak to his own true princess. Why I held my tongue of late was

only lest they should cut my head off for talking, as they did poor

Falada’s.”

“Thou art a very crafty knave,” said Brand, “and hast had clerk-learning

in thy time, I can see, and made bad use of it. I misdoubt very much

that thou art some runaway monk.”

“That am I not, by St. Peter’s chains!” said Martin, in an eager,

terrified voice. “Lord Hereward, I came hither as your father’s

messenger and servant. You will see me safe out of this abbey, like an

honorable gentleman!”

“I will. All I know of him, uncle, is that he used to tell me stories,

when I was a boy, of enchanters, and knights, and dragons, and such

like, and got into trouble for filling my head with such fancies. Now

let him tell his story in peace.”

“He shall; but I misdoubt the fellow very much. He talks as if he knew

Latin; and what business has a foot-running slave to do that?”

So Martin went on, somewhat abashed. “‘And,’ said your father, ‘justice

I will have, and leave injustice, and the overlooking of it, to those

who wish to profit thereby.’

“And at that Godwin smiled, and said to the King, ‘The Earl is wise, as

usual, and speaks like a very Solomon. Your Majesty must, in spite of

your own tenderness of heart, have these letters of outlawry made out.’

“Then all our men murmured,--and I as loud as any. But old Surturbrand

the housecarle did more; for out he stepped to your father’s side, and

spoke right up before the King.

“‘Bonny times,’ he said, ‘I have lived to see, when a lad of Earl

Oslac’s blood is sent out of the land, a beggar and a wolf’s head,

for playing a boy’s trick or two, and upsetting a shaveling priest!

We managed such wild young colts better, we Vikings who conquered the

Danelagh. If Canute had had a son like Hereward--as would to God he had

had!--he would have dealt with him as old Swend Forkbeard (God grant I

meet him in Valhalla, in spite of all priests!) did by Canute himself

when he was young, and kicked and plunged awhile at being first bitted

and saddled.’

“‘What does the man say?’ asked the King, for old Surturbrand was

talking broad Danish.

“‘He is a housecarle of mine, Lord King, a good man and true; but old

age and rough Danish blood has made him forget that he stands before

kings and earls.’

“‘By ----, Earl!’ says Surturbrand, ‘I have fought knee to knee beside a

braver king than that there, and nobler earls than ever a one here; and

was never afraid, like a free Dane, to speak my mind to them, by sea or

land. And if the King, with his French ways, does not understand a plain

man’s talk, the two earls yonder do right well, and I say,--Deal by this

lad in the good old fashion. Give him half a dozen long ships, and what

crews he can get together, and send him out, as Canute would have done,

to seek his fortune like a Viking; and if he comes home with plenty of

wounds, and plenty of plunder, give him an earldom as he deserves. Do

you ask your Countess, Earl Godwin:--she is of the right Danish blood,

God bless her! though she is your wife,--and see if she does not know

how to bring a naughty lad to his senses.’

“Then Harold the Earl said: ‘The old man is right. King, listen to what

he says.’ And he told him all, quite eagerly.”

“How did you know that? Can you understand French?”

“I am a poor idiot, give me a halfpenny,” said Martin, in a doleful

voice, as he threw into his face and whole figure a look of helpless

stupidity and awkwardness, which set them both laughing.

But Hereward checked himself. “And you think he was in earnest?”

“As sure as there are holy crows in Crowland. But it was of no use. Your

father got a parchment, with an outlandish Norman seal hanging to it,

and sent me off with it that same night to give to the lawman. So wolf’s

head you are, my lord, and there is no use crying over spilt milk.”

“And Harold spoke for me? It will be as well to tell Abbot Leofric that,

in case he be inclined to turn traitor, and refuse to open the gates.

Once outside them, I care not for mortal man.”

“My poor boy, there will be many a one whom thou hast wronged only too

ready to lie in wait for thee, now thy life is in every man’s hand. If

the outlawry is published, thou hadst best start to-night, and get past

Lincoln before morning.”

“I shall stay quietly here, and get a good night’s rest; and then ride

out to-morrow morning in the face of the whole shire. No, not a word!

You would not have me sneak away like a coward?”

Brand smiled and shrugged his shoulders: being very much of the same

mind.

“At least, go north.”

“And why north?”

“You have no quarrel in Northumberland, and the King’s writ runs very

slowly there, if at all. Old Siward Digre may stand your friend.”

“He? He is a fast friend of my father’s.”

“What of that? the old Viking will like you none the less for having

shown a touch of his own temper. Go to him, I say, and tell him that I

sent you.”

“But he is fighting the Scots beyond the Forth.”

“So much the better. There will be good work for you to do. And

Gislebert of Ghent is up there too, I hear, trying to settle himself

among the Scots. He is your mother’s kinsman; and as for your being

an outlaw, he wants hard hitters and hard riders, and all is fish that

comes to his net. Find him out, too, and tell him I sent you.”

“You are a good old uncle,” said Hereward. “Why were you not a soldier?”

Brand laughed somewhat sadly.

“If I had been a soldier, lad, where would you have looked for a friend

this day? No. God has done what was merciful with me and my sins. May he

do the same by thee and thine.”

Hereward made an impatient movement. He disliked any word which seemed

likely to soften his own hardness of heart. But he kissed his uncle

lovingly on both cheeks.

“By the by, Martin,--any message from my lady mother?”

“None!”

“Quite right and pious. I am an enemy to Holy Church and therefore to

her. Good night, uncle.”

“Hey?” asked Brand; “where is that footman,--Martin you call him? I must

have another word with him.”

But Martin was gone.

“No matter. I shall question him sharply enough to-morrow, I warrant.”

And Hereward went out to his lodging; while the good Prior went to his

prayers.

When Hereward entered his room, Martin started out of the darkness, and

followed him in. Then he shut to the door carefully, and pulled out a

bag.

“There was no message from my lady: but there was this.”

The bag was full of money.

“Why did you not tell me of this before?”

“Never show money before a monk.”

“Villain! would you mistrust my uncle?”

“Any man with a shaven crown. St. Peter is his God and Lord and

conscience; and if he saw but the shine of a penny, for St. Peter he

would want it.”

“And he shall have it,” quoth Hereward; and flung out of the room, and

into his uncle’s.

“Uncle, I have money. I am come to pay back what I took from

the Steward, and as much more into the bargain.” And he told out

eight-and-thirty pieces.

“Thank God and all his saints!” cried Brand, weeping abundantly for joy;

for he had acquired, by long devotion, the _donum lachrymarum_,--that

lachrymose and somewhat hysterical temperament common among pious monks,

and held to be a mark of grace.

“Blessed St. Peter, thou art repaid; and thou wilt be merciful!”

Brand believed, in common with all monks then, that Hereward had robbed,

not merely the Abbey of Peterborough, but, what was more, St. Peter

himself; thereby converting into an implacable and internecine foe the

chief of the Apostles, the rock on which was founded the whole Church.

“Now, uncle,” said Hereward, “do me one good deed in return. Promise me

that, if you can help it, none of my poor housecarles shall suffer

for my sins. I led them into trouble. I am punished. I have made

restitution,--at least to St. Peter. See that my father and mother,

if they be the Christians they call themselves, forgive and forget all

offences except mine.”

“I will; so help me all saints and our Lord. O my boy, my boy, thou

shouldst have been a king’s thane, and not an outlaw!”

And he hurried off with the news to the Abbot.

When Hereward returned to his room, Martin was gone.

“Farewell, good men of Peterborough,” said Hereward, as he leapt into

the saddle next morning. “I had made a vow against you, and came to try

you; to see whether you would force me to fulfil it or not. But you have

been so kind that I have half repented of it; and the evil shall not

come in the days of Abbot Leofric, nor of Brand the Prior, though it may

come in the days of Herluin the Steward, if he live long enough.”

“What do you mean, you incarnate fiend, only fit to worship Thor and

Odin?” asked Brand.

“That I would burn Goldenborough, and Herluin the Steward within it,

ere I die. I fear I shall do it; I fear I must do it. Ten years ago come

Lammas, Herluin bade light the peat-stack under me. Do you recollect?”

“And so he did, the hound!” quoth Brand. “I had forgotten that.”

“Little Hereward never forgets foe or friend. Ever since, on Lammas

night,--hold still, horse!--I dream of fire and flame, and of

Goldenborough in the glare of it. If it is written in the big book,

happen it must; if not, so much the better for Goldenborough, for it is

a pretty place, and honest Englishmen in it. Only see that there be not

too many Frenchmen crept in when I come back, beside our French friend

Herluin; and see, too, that there be not a peat-stack handy: a word is

enough to wise men like you. Good by!”

“God help thee, thou sinful boy!” said the Abbot.

“Hereward, Hereward! Come back!” cried Brand.

But the boy had spurred his horse through the gateway, and was far down

the road.

“Leofric, my friend,” said Brand, sadly, “this is my sin, and no man’s

else. And heavy penance will I do for it, till that lad returns in

peace.”

“Your sin?”

“Mine, Abbot. I persuaded his mother to send him hither to be a monk.

Alas! alas! How long will men try to be wiser than Him who maketh men?”

“I do not understand thee,” quoth the Abbot. And no more he did.

It was four o’clock on a May morning, when Hereward set out to see the

world, with good armor on his back, good weapon by his side, good horse

between his knees, and good money in his purse. What could a lad of

eighteen want more, who under the harsh family rule of those times had

known nothing of a father’s, and but too little of a mother’s, love?

He rode away northward through the Bruneswald, over the higher land of

Lincolnshire, through primeval glades of mighty oak and ash, holly and

thorn, swarming with game, which was as highly preserved then as now,

under Canute’s severe forest laws. The yellow roes stood and stared at

him knee-deep in the young fern; the pheasant called his hens out to

feed in the dewy grass; the blackbird and thrush sang out from every

bough; the wood-lark trilled above the high oak-tops, and sank down on

them as his song sank down. And Hereward rode on, rejoicing in it all.

It was a fine world in the Bruneswald. What was it then outside? Not to

him, as to us, a world circular, sailed round, circumscribed, mapped,

botanized, zoologized; a tiny planet about which everybody knows,

or thinks they know everything: but a world infinite, magical,

supernatural,--because unknown; a vast flat plain reaching no one knew

whence or where, save that the mountains stood on the four corners

thereof to keep it steady, and the four winds of heaven blew out of

them; and in the centre, which was to him the Bruneswald, such things

as he saw; but beyond, things unspeakable,--dragons, giants, rocs, orcs,

witch-whales, griffins, chimeras, satyrs, enchanters, Paynims, Saracen

Emirs and Sultans, Kaisers of Constantinople, Kaisers of Ind and of

Cathay, and beyond them again of lands as yet unknown. At the very least

he could go to Brittany, to the forest of Brocheliaunde, where (so all

men said) fairies might be seen bathing in the fountains, and possibly

be won and wedded by a bold and dexterous knight after the fashion of

Sir Gruelan. [Footnote: Wace, author of the “Roman de Rou,” went to

Brittany a generation later, to see those same fairies: but had no

sport; and sang,--

“Fol i alai, fol m’en revins;

Folie quis, por fol me tins”]

What was there not to be seen and conquered? Where would he go? Where

would he not go? For the spirit of Odin the Goer, the spirit which has

sent his children round the world, was strong within him. He would go

to Ireland, to the Ostmen, or Irish Danes men at Dublin, Waterford, or

Cork, and marry some beautiful Irish Princess with gray eyes, and raven

locks, and saffron smock, and great gold bracelets from her native

hills. No; he would go off to the Orkneys, and join Bruce and Ranald,

and the Vikings of the northern seas, and all the hot blood which had

found even Norway too hot to hold it; and sail through witch-whales and

icebergs to Iceland and Greenland, and the sunny lands which they said

lay even beyond, across the all but unknown ocean. He would go up the

Baltic to the Jomsburg Vikings, and fight against Lett and Esthonian

heathen, and pierce inland, perhaps, through Puleyn and the bison

forests, to the land from whence came the magic swords and the

old Persian coins which he had seen so often in the halls of his

forefathers. No; he would go South, to the land of sun and wine; and

see the magicians of Cordova and Seville; and beard Mussulman hounds

worshipping their Mahomets; and perhaps bring home an Emir’s daughter,--

“With more gay gold about her middle,

Than would buy half Northumberlee.”

Or he would go up the Straits, and on to Constantinople and the great

Kaiser of the Greeks, and join the Varanger Guard, and perhaps, like

Harold Hardraade in his own days, after being cast to the lion for

carrying off a fair Greek lady, tear out the monster’s tongue with his

own hands, and show the Easterns what a Viking’s son could do. And as he

dreamed of the infinite world and its infinite wonders, the enchanters

he might meet, the jewels he might find, the adventures he might essay,

he held that he must succeed in all, with hope and wit and a strong arm;

and forgot altogether that, mixed up with the cosmogony of an infinite

flat plain called the Earth, there was joined also the belief in a flat

roof above called Heaven, on which (seen at times in visions through

clouds and stars) sat saints, angels, and archangels, forevermore

harping on their golden harps, and knowing neither vanity nor vexation

of spirit, lust nor pride, murder nor war;--and underneath a floor, the

name whereof was Hell; the mouths whereof (as all men knew) might be

seen on Hecla and Aetna and Stromboli; and the fiends heard within,

tormenting, amid fire, and smoke, and clanking chains, the souls of the

eternally lost.

As he rode on slowly though cheerfully, as a man who will not tire his

horse at the beginning of a long day’s journey, and knows not where he

shall pass the night, he was aware of a man on foot coming up behind

him at a slow, steady, loping, wolf-like trot, which in spite of its

slowness gained ground on him so fast, that he saw at once that the man

could be no common runner.

The man came up; and behold, he was none other than Martin Lightfoot.

“What! art thou here?” asked Hereward, suspiciously, and half cross at

seeing any visitor from the old world which he had just cast off. “How

gottest thou out of St. Peter’s last night?”

Martin’s tongue was hanging out of his mouth like a running hound’s, but

he seemed, like a hound, to perspire through his mouth, for he answered

without the least sign of distress, without even pulling in his

tongue,--

“Over the wall, the moment the Prior’s back was turned. I was not going

to wait till I was chained up in some rat’s-hole with a half-hundred

of iron on my leg, and flogged till I confessed that I was what I am

not,--a runaway monk.”

“And why art here?”

“Because I am going with you.”

“Going with me?” said Hereward; “what can I do for thee?”

“I can do for you,” said Martin.

“What?”

“Groom your horse, wash your shirt, clean your weapons, find your inn,

fight your enemies, cheat your friends,--anything and everything. You

are going to see the world. I am going with you.”

“Thou canst be my servant? A right slippery one, I expect,” said

Hereward, looking down on him with some suspicion.

“Some are not the rogues they seem. I can keep my secrets and yours

too.”

“Before I can trust thee with my secrets, I shall expect to know some of

thine,” said Hereward.

Martin Lightfoot looked up with a cunning smile. “A servant can always

know his master’s secrets if he likes. But that is no reason a master

should know his servant’s.”

“Thou shalt tell me thine, man, or I shall ride off and leave thee.”

“Not so easy, my lord. Where that heavy horse can go, Martin Lightfoot

can follow. But I will tell you one secret, which I never told to living

man. I can read and write like any clerk.”

“Thou read and write?”

“Ay, good Latin enough, and Irish too, what is more. And now, because I

love you, and because you I will serve, willy nilly, I will tell you all

the secrets I have, as long as my breath lasts, for my tongue is

rather stiff after that long story about the bell-wether. I was born in

Ireland, in Waterford town. My mother was an English slave, one of those

that Earl Godwin’s wife--not this one that is now, Gyda, but the old

one, King Canute’s sister--used to sell out of England by the score,

tied together with ropes, boys and girls from Bristol town. Her master,

my father that was (I shall know him again), got tired of her, and

wanted to give her away to one of his kernes. She would not have that;

so he hung her up hand and foot, and beat her that she died. There was

an abbey hard by, and the Church laid on him a penance,--all that they

dared get out of him,--that he should give me to the monks, being then a

seven-years’ boy. Well, I grew up in that abbey; they taught me my fa

fa mi fa: but I liked better conning of ballads and hearing stories of

ghosts and enchanters, such as I used to tell you. I’ll tell you plenty

more whenever you’re tired. Then they made me work; and that I never

could abide at all. Then they beat me every day; and that I could abide

still less; but always I stuck to my book, for one thing I saw,--that

learning is power, my lord; and that the reason why the monks are

masters of the land is, they are scholars, and you fighting men are

none. Then I fell in love (as young blood will) with an Irish lass, when

I was full seventeen years old; and when they found out that, they held

me down on the floor and beat me till I was wellnigh dead. They put me

in prison for a month; and between bread-and-water and darkness I went

nigh foolish. They let me out, thinking I could do no more harm to

man or lass; and when I found out how profitable folly was, foolish I

remained, at least as foolish as seemed good to me. But one night I got

into the abbey church, stole therefrom that which I have with me now,

and which shall serve you and me in good stead yet,--out and away aboard

a ship among the buscarles, and off into the Norway sea. But after a

voyage or two, so it befell, I was wrecked in the Wash by Botulfston

Deeps, and, begging my way inland, met with your father, and took

service with him, as I have taken service now with you.”

“Now, what has made thee take service with me?”

“Because you are you.”

“Give me none of your parables and dark sayings, but speak out like a

man. What canst see in me that thou shouldest share an outlaw’s fortune

with me?”

“I had run away from a monastery, so had you; I hated the monks, so did

you; I liked to tell stories,--since I found good to shut my mouth I

tell them to myself all day long, sometimes all night too. When I found

out you liked to hear them, I loved you all the more. Then they told me

not to speak to you; I held my tongue. I bided my time. I knew you would

be outlawed some day. I knew you would turn Viking and kempery-man, and

kill giants and enchanters, and win yourself honor and glory; and I knew

I should have my share in it. I knew you would need me some day; and

you need me now, and here I am; and if you try to cut me down with your

sword, I will dodge you, and follow you, and dodge you again, till I

force you to let me be your man, for with you I will live and die. And

now I can talk no more.”

“And with me thou shalt live and die,” said Hereward, pulling up his

horse, and frankly holding out his hand to his new friend.

Martin Lightfoot took his hand, kissed it, licked it almost as a dog

would have done. “I am your man,” he said, “amen; and true man I will

prove to you, if you will prove true to me.” And he dropped quietly back

behind Hereward’s horse, as if the business of his life was settled, and

his mind utterly at rest.

“There is one more likeness between us,” said Hereward, after a few

minutes’ thought. “If I have robbed a church, thou hast robbed one too.

What is this precious spoil which is to serve me and thee in such mighty

stead?”

Martin drew from inside his shirt and under his waistband a small

battle-axe, and handed it up to Hereward. It was a tool the like of

which in shape Hereward had seldom seen, and never its equal in beauty.

The handle was some fifteen inches long, made of thick strips of black

whalebone, curiously bound with silver, and butted with narwhal ivory.

This handle was evidently the work of some cunning Norseman of old. But

who was the maker of the blade? It was some eight inches long, with a

sharp edge on one side, a sharp crooked pick on the other; of the finest

steel, inlaid with strange characters in gold, the work probably of some

Circassian, Tartar, or Persian; such a battle-axe as Rustum or Zohrab

may have wielded in fight upon the banks of Oxus; one of those magic

weapons, brought, men knew not how, out of the magic East, which were

hereditary in many a Norse family and sung of in many a Norse saga.

“Look at it,” said Martin Lightfoot. “There is magic on it. It must

bring us luck. Whoever holds that must kill his man. It will pick a lock

of steel. It will crack a mail corslet as a nut-hatch cracks a nut.

It will hew a lance in two at a single blow. Devils and spirits forged

it,--I know that; Virgilius the Enchanter, perhaps, or Solomon the

Great, or whosoever’s name is on it, graven there in letters of gold.

Handle it, feel its balance; but no,--do not handle it too much. There

is a devil in it, who would make you kill me. Whenever I play with it I

long to kill a man. It would be so easy,--so easy. Give it me back, my

lord, give it me back, lest the devil come through the handle into your

palm, and possess you.”

Hereward laughed, and gave him back his battle-axe. But he had hardly

less doubt of the magic virtues of such a blade than had Martin himself.

“Magical or not, thou wilt not have to hit a man twice with that,

Martin, my lad. So we two outlaws are both well armed; and having

neither wife nor child, land nor beeves to lose, ought to be a match for

any six honest men who may have a grudge against us, and sound reasons

at home for running away.”

And so those two went northward through the green Bruneswald, and

northward again through merry Sherwood, and were not seen in that land

again for many a year.