HOW HEREWARD SLEW THE BEAR.
Of Hereward’s doings for the next few months naught is known. He may
very likely have joined Siward in the Scotch war. He may have looked,
wondering, for the first time in his life, upon the bones of the old
world, where they rise at Dunkeld out of the lowlands of the Tay; and
have trembled lest the black crags of Birnam should topple on his head
with all their pines. He may have marched down from that famous leaguer
with the Gospatricks and Dolfins, and the rest of the kindred of Crinan
(abthane or abbot,--let antiquaries decide),--of Dunkeld, and of Duncan,
and of Siward, and of the outraged Sibilla. He may have helped himself
to bring Birnam Wood to Dunsinane, “on the day of the Seven Sleepers,”
and heard Siward, when his son Asbiorn’s corpse was carried into camp,
[Footnote: Shakespeare makes young Siward his son. He, too, was slain
in the battle: but he was Siward’s nephew.] ask only, “Has he all his
wounds in front?” He may have seen old Siward, after Macbeth’s defeat
(not death, as Shakespeare relates the story), go back to Northumbria
“with such booty as no man had obtained before,”--a proof, if the fact
be fact, that the Scotch lowlands were not, in the eleventh century, the
poor and barbarous country which some have reported them to have been.
All this is not only possible, but probable enough, the dates
considered: the chroniclers, however, are silent. They only say that
Hereward was in those days beyond Northumberland with Gisebert of Ghent.
Gisebert, Gislebert, Gilbert, Guibert, Goisbricht, of Ghent, who
afterwards owned, by chance of war, many a fair manor about Lincoln
city, was one of those valiant Flemings who settled along the east and
northeast coast of Scotland in the eleventh century. They fought with
the Celtic princes, and then married with their daughters; got to
themselves lands “by the title-deed of the sword”; and so became--the
famous “Freskin the Fleming” especially--the ancestors of the finest
aristocracy, both physically and intellectually, in the world. They had
their connections, moreover, with the Norman court of Rouen, through
the Duchess Matilda, daughter of their old Seigneur, Baldwin, Marquis
of Flanders; their connections, too, with the English Court, through
Countess Judith, wife of Earl Tosti Godwinsson, another daughter of
Baldwin’s. Their friendship was sought, their enmity feared, far
and wide throughout the north. They seem to have been civilizers and
cultivators and traders,--with the instinct of true Flemings,--as
well as conquerors; they were in those very days bringing to order and
tillage the rich lands of the north-east, from the Frith of Moray to
that of Forth; and forming a rampart for Scotland against the invasions
of Sweyn, Hardraade, and all the wild Vikings of the northern seas.
Amongst them, in those days, Gilbert of Ghent seems to have been a
notable personage, to judge from the great house which he kept, and the
_milites tyrones,_ or squires in training for the honor of knighthood,
who fed at his table. Where he lived, the chroniclers report not. To
them the country “ultra Northumbriam,” beyond the Forth, was as Russia
or Cathay, where
“Geographers on pathless downs
Put elephants for want of towns.”
As indeed it was to that French map-maker who, as late as the middle of
the eighteenth century (not having been to Aberdeen or Elgin), leaves
all the country north of the Tay a blank, with the inscription: “_Terre
inculte et sauvage, habitée par les Higlanders._”
Wherever Gilbert lived, however, he heard that Hereward was outlawed,
and sent for him, says the story. And there he lived, doubtless happily
enough, fighting Highlanders and hunting deer, so that as yet the pains
and penalties of exile did not press very hardly upon him. The handsome,
petulant, good-humored lad had become in a few weeks the darling
of Gilbert’s ladies, and the envy of all his knights and gentlemen.
Hereward the singer, harp-player, dancer, Hereward the rider and hunter,
was in all mouths; but he himself was discontented at having as yet
fallen in with no adventure worthy of a man, and looked curiously and
longingly at the menagerie of wild beasts enclosed in strong wooden
cages, which Gilbert kept in one corner of the great court-yard, not for
any scientific purposes, but to try with them, at Christmas, Easter, and
Whitsuntide, the mettle of the young gentlemen who were candidates for
the honor of knighthood. But after looking over the bulls and stags,
wolves and bears, Hereward settled it in his mind that there was none
worthy of his steel, save one huge white bear, whom no man had yet dared
to face, and whom Hereward, indeed, had never seen, hidden as he was
all day within the old oven-shaped Pict’s house of stone, which had been
turned into his den. There was a mystery about the uncanny brute which
charmed Hereward. He was said to be half-human, perhaps wholly human; to
be the son of the Fairy Bear, near kinsman, if not uncle or cousin, of
Siward Digre. He had, like his fairy father, iron claws; he had human
intellect, and understood human speech, and the arts of war,--at least
so all in the place believed, and not as absurdly as at first sight
seems.
For the brown bear, and much more the white, was, among the Northern
nations, in himself a creature magical and superhuman. “He is God’s
dog,” whispered the Lapp, and called him “the old man in the fur cloak,”
afraid to use his right name, even inside the tent, for fear of his
overhearing and avenging the insult. “He has twelve men’s strength, and
eleven men’s wit,” sang the Norseman, and prided himself accordingly,
like a true Norseman, on outwitting and slaying the enchanted monster.
Terrible was the brown bear: but more terrible “the white sea-deer,” as
the Saxons called him; the hound of Hrymir, the whale’s bane, the seal’s
dread, the rider of the iceberg, the sailor of the floe, who ranged for
his prey under the six months’ night, lighted by Surtur’s fires, even
to the gates of Muspelheim. To slay him was a feat worthy of Beowulf’s
self; and the greatest wonder, perhaps, among all the wealth of
Crowland, was the twelve white bear-skins which lay before the altars,
the gift of the great Canute. How Gilbert had obtained his white bear,
and why he kept him there in durance vile, was a mystery over which men
shook their heads. Again and again Hereward asked his host to let him
try his strength against the monster of the North. Again and again the
shrieks of the ladies, and Gilbert’s own pity for the stripling youth,
brought a refusal. But Hereward settled it in his heart, nevertheless,
that somehow or other, when Christmas time came round, he would extract
from Gilbert, drunk or sober, leave to fight that bear; and then either
make himself a name, or die like a man.
Meanwhile Hereward made a friend. Among all the ladies of Gilbert’s
household, however kind they were inclined to be to him, he took a fancy
but to one,--and that was to a little girl of eight years old. Alftruda
was her name. He liked to amuse himself with this child, without, as he
fancied, any danger of falling in love; for already his dreams of love
were of the highest and most fantastic; and an Emir’s daughter, or a
Princess of Constantinople, were the very lowest game at which he meant
to fly. Alftruda was beautiful, too, exceedingly, and precocious, and,
it may be, vain enough to repay his attentions in good earnest. Moreover
she was English as he was, and royal likewise; a relation of Elfgiva,
daughter of Ethelred, once King of England, who, as all know, married
Uchtred, prince of Northumberland and grandfather of Gospatrick, Earl of
Northumberland, and ancestor of all the Dunbars. Between the English
lad then and the English maiden grew up in a few weeks an innocent
friendship, which had almost become more than friendship, through the
intervention of the Fairy Bear.
For as Hereward was coming in one afternoon from hunting, hawk on fist,
with Martin Lightfoot trotting behind, crane and heron, duck and hare,
slung over his shoulder, on reaching the court-yard gates he was aware
of screams and shouts within, tumult and terror among man and beast.
Hereward tried to force his horse in at the gate. The beast stopped
and turned, snorting with fear; and no wonder; for in the midst of the
court-yard stood the Fairy Bear; his white mane bristled up till he
seemed twice as big as any of the sober brown bears which Hereward yet
had seen: his long snake neck and cruel visage wreathed about in search
of prey. A dead horse, its back broken by a single blow of the paw, and
two or three writhing dogs, showed that the beast had turned (like
too many of his human kindred) “Berserker.” The court-yard was utterly
empty: but from the ladies’ bower came shrieks and shouts, not only of
women, but of men; and knocking at the bower door, adding her screams
to those inside, was a little white figure, which Hereward recognized
as Alftruda’s. They had barricaded themselves inside, leaving the child
out; and now dared not open the door, as the bear swung and rolled
towards it, looking savagely right and left for a fresh victim.
Hereward leaped from his horse, and, drawing his sword, rushed forward
with a shout which made the bear turn round.
He looked once back at the child; then round again at Hereward: and,
making up his mind to take the largest morsel first, made straight at
him with a growl which there was no mistaking.
He was within two paces; then he rose on his hind legs, a head and
shoulders taller than Hereward, and lifted the iron talons high in air.
Hereward knew that there was but one spot at which to strike; and he
struck true and strong, before the iron paw could fall, right on the
muzzle of the monster.
He heard the dull crash of the steel; he felt the sword jammed tight. He
shut his eyes for an instant, fearing lest, as in dreams, his blow had
come to naught; lest his sword had turned aside, or melted like water in
his hand, and the next moment would find him crushed to earth, blinded
and stunned. Something tugged at his sword. He opened his eyes, and saw
the huge carcass bend, reel, roll slowly over to one side dead, tearing
out of his hand the sword, which was firmly fixed into the skull.
Hereward stood awhile staring at the beast like a man astonished at
what he himself had done. He had had his first adventure, and he had
conquered. He was now a champion in his own right,--a hero of the
heroes,--one who might take rank, if he went on, beside Beowulf, Frotho,
Ragnar Lodbrog, or Harald Hardraade. He had done this deed. What was
there after this which he might not do? And he stood there in the
fulness of his pride, defiant of earth and heaven, while in his heart
arose the thought of that old Viking who cried, in the pride of his
godlessness: “I never on earth met him whom I feared, and why should I
fear Him in heaven? If I met Odin, I would fight with Odin. If Odin were
the stronger, he would slay me; if I were the stronger, I would slay
him.” And there he stood, staring, and dreaming over renown to come,--a
true pattern of the half-savage hero of those rough times, capable
of all vices except cowardice, and capable, too, of all virtues save
humility.
“Do you not see,” said Martin Lightfoot’s voice, close by, “that there
is a fair lady trying to thank you, while you are so rude or so proud
that you will not vouchsafe her one look?”
It was true. Little Alftruda had been clinging to him for five minutes
past. He took the child up in his arms and kissed her with pure kisses,
which for a moment softened his hard heart; then, setting her down, he
turned to Martin.
“I have done it, Martin.”
“Yes, you have done it; I spied you. What will the old folks at home say
to this?”
“What care I?”
Martin Lightfoot shook his head, and drew out his knife.
“What is that for?” said Hereward.
“When the master kills the game, the knave can but skin it. We may sleep
warm under this fur in many a cold night by sea and moor.”
“Nay,” said Hereward, laughing; “when the master kills the game he must
first carry it home. Let us take him and set him up against the bower
door there, to astonish the brave knights inside.” And stooping down, he
attempted to lift the huge carcass; but in vain. At last, with Martin’s
help, he got it fairly on his shoulders, and the two dragged their
burden to the bower and dashed it against the door, shouting with all
their might to those within to open it.
Windows, it must be remembered, were in those days so few and far
between that the folks inside had remained quite unaware of what was
going on without.
The door was opened cautiously enough; and out looked, to the shame of
knighthood, be it said, two or three knights who had taken shelter in
the bower with the ladies. Whatever they were going to say the
ladies forestalled, for, rushing out across the prostrate bear,
they overwhelmed Hereward with praises, thanks, and, after the
straightforward custom of those days, with substantial kisses.
“You must be knighted at once,” cried they. “You have knighted yourself
by that single blow.”
“A pity, then,” said one of the knights to the others, “that he had not
given that accolade to himself, instead of to the bear.”
“Unless some means are found,” said another, “of taking down this boy’s
conceit, life will soon be not worth having here.”
“Either he must take ship,” said a third, “and look for adventures
elsewhere, or I must.”
Martin Lightfoot heard those words; and knowing that envy and hatred,
like all other vices in those rough-hewn times, were apt to take very
startling and unmistakeable shapes, kept his eye accordingly on those
three knights.
“He must be knighted,--he shall be knighted, as soon as Sir Gilbert
comes home,” said all the ladies in chorus.
“I should be sorry to think,” said Hereward, with the blundering mock
humility of a self-conceited boy, “that I had done anything worthy of
such an honor. I hope to win my spurs by greater feats than these.”
A burst of laughter from the knights and gentlemen followed.
“How loud the young bantam crows after his first little scuffle!”
“Hark to him! What will he do next? Eat a dragon? Fly to the moon? Marry
the Sophy of Egypt’s daughter?”
This last touched Hereward to the quick, for it was just what he thought
of doing; and his blood, heated enough already, beat quicker, as some
one cried, with the evident intent of picking a quarrel:
“That was meant for us. If the man who killed the bear has not earned
knighthood, what must we be, who have not killed him? You understand his
meaning, gentlemen,--don’t forget it!”
Hereward looked down, and setting his foot on the bear’s head, wrenched
out of it the sword which he had left till now, with pardonable pride,
fast set in the skull.
Martin Lightfoot, for his part, drew stealthily from his bosom the
little magic axe, keeping his eye on the brain-pan of the last speaker.
The lady of the house cried “Shame!” and ordered the knights away with
haughty words and gestures, which, because they were so well deserved,
only made the quarrel more deadly.
Then she commanded Hereward to sheathe his sword.
He did so; and turning to the knights, said with all courtesy: “You
mistake me, sirs. You were where brave knights should be, within the
beleaguered fortress, defending the ladies. Had you remained outside,
and been eaten by the bear, what must have befallen them, had he burst
open the door? As for this little lass, whom you left outside, she is
too young to requite knight’s prowess by lady’s love; and therefore
beneath your attention, and only fit for the care of a boy like me.” And
taking up Alftruda in his arms, he carried her in and disappeared.
Who now but Hereward was in all men’s mouths? The minstrels made ballads
on him; the lasses sang his praises (says the chronicler) as they danced
upon the green. Gilbert’s lady would need give him the seat, and all
the honors, of a belted knight, though knight he was none. And daily
and weekly the valiant lad grew and hardened into a valiant man, and a
courteous one withal, giving no offence himself, and not over-ready to
take offence at other men.
The knights were civil enough to him, the ladies more than civil; he
hunted, he wrestled, he tilted; he was promised a chance of fighting for
glory, as soon as a Highland chief should declare war against Gilbert,
or drive off his cattle,--an event which (and small blame to the
Highland chiefs) happened every six months.
No one was so well content with himself as Hereward; and therefore he
fancied that the world must be equally content with him, and he was much
disconcerted when Martin drew him aside one day, and whispered: “If I
were my lord, I should wear a mail shirt under my coat to-morrow out
hunting.”
“What?”
“The arrow that can go through a deer’s bladebone can go through a
man’s.”
“Who should harm me?”
“Any man of the dozen who eat at the same table.”
“What have I done to them? If I had my laugh at them, they had their
laugh at me; and we are quits.”
“There is another score, my lord, which you have forgotten, and that is
all on your side.”
“Eh?”
“You killed the bear. Do you expect them to forgive you that, till they
have repaid you with interest?”
“Pish!”
“You do not want for wit, my lord. Use it, and think. What right has a
little boy like you to come here, killing bears which grown men cannot
kill? What can you expect but just punishment for your insolence,--say,
a lance between your shoulders while you stoop to drink, as Sigfried had
for daring to tame Brunhild? And more, what right have you to come here,
and so win the hearts of the ladies, that the lady of all the ladies
should say, ‘If aught happen to my poor boy,--and he cannot live
long,--I would adopt Hereward for my own son, and show his mother what
a fool some folks think her?’ So, my lord, put on your mail shirt
to-morrow, and take care of narrow ways, and sharp corners. For
to-morrow it will be tried, that I know, before my Lord Gilbert comes
back from the Highlands; but by whom I know not, and care little, seeing
that there are half a dozen in the house who would be glad enough of the
chance.”
Hereward took his advice, and rode out with three or four knights the
next morning into the fir-forest; not afraid, but angry and sad. He
was not yet old enough to estimate the virulence of envy, to take
ingratitude and treachery for granted. He was to learn the lesson then,
as a wholesome chastener to the pride of success. He was to learn it
again in later years, as an additional bitterness in the humiliation of
defeat; and find out, as does many a man, that if he once fall, or seem
to fall, a hundred curs spring up to bark at him, who dared not open
their mouths while he was on his legs.
So they rode into the forest, and parted, each with his footman and his
dogs, in search of boar and deer; and each had his sport without meeting
again for some two hours or more.
Hereward and Martin came at last to a narrow gully, a murderous place
enough. Huge fir-trees roofed it in, and made a night of noon. High
banks of earth and great boulders walled it in right and left for twenty
feet above. The track, what with pack-horses’ feet, and what with the
wear and tear of five hundred years’ rain-fall, was a rut three feet
deep and two feet broad, in which no horse could turn. Any other day
Hereward would have cantered down it with merely a tightened rein. Today
he turned to Martin and said,--
“A very fit and proper place for this same treason, unless you have been
drinking beer and thinking beer.”
But Martin was nowhere to be seen.
A pebble thrown from the right bank struck him, and he looked up.
Martin’s face was peering through the heather overhead, his finger on
his lips. Then he pointed cautiously, first up the pass, then down.
Hereward felt that his sword was loose in the sheath, and then gripped
his lance, with a heart beating, but not with fear.
The next moment he heard the rattle of a horse’s hoofs behind him;
looked back; and saw a knight charging desperately down the gully, his
bow in hand, and arrow drawn to the head.
To turn was impossible. To stop, even to walk on, was to be ridden over
and hurled to the ground helplessly. To gain the mouth of the gully, and
then turn on his pursuer, was his only chance. For the first and almost
the last time in his life, he struck spurs into his horse, and ran
away. As he went, an arrow struck him sharply in the back, piercing
the corslet, but hardly entering the flesh. As he neared the mouth, two
other knights crashed their horses through the brushwood from right
and left, and stood awaiting him, their spears ready to strike. He was
caught in a trap. A shield might have saved him; but he had none.
He did not flinch. Dropping his reins, and driving in the spurs once
more, he met them in full shock. With his left hand he hurled aside the
left-hand lance, with his right he hurled his own with all his force
at the right-hand foe, and saw it pass clean through the felon’s chest,
while his lance-point dropped, and passed harmlessly behind his knee.
So much for lances in front. But the knight behind? Would not his sword
the next moment be through his brain?
There was a clatter, a crash, and looking back Hereward saw horse and
man rolling in the rut, and rolling with them Martin Lightfoot. He had
already pinned the felon knight’s head against the steep bank, and, with
uplifted axe, was meditating a pick at his face which would have stopped
alike his love-making and his fighting.
“Hold thy hand,” shouted Hereward. “Let us see who he is; and remember
that he is at least a knight.”
“But one that will ride no more to-day. I finished his horse’s going as
I rolled down the bank.”
It was true. He had broken the poor beast’s leg with a blow of the axe,
and they had to kill the horse out of pity ere they left.
Martin dragged his prisoner forward.
“You?” cried Hereward. “And I saved your life three days ago!”
The knight answered nothing.
“You will have to walk home. Let that be punishment enough for you,” and
he turned.
“He will have to ride in a woodman’s cart, if he have the luck to find
one.”
The third knight had fled, and after him the dead man’s horse. Hereward
and his man rode home in peace, and the third knight, after trying
vainly to walk a mile or two, fell and lay, and was fain to fulfil
Martin’s prophecy, and be brought home in a cart, to carry for years
after, like Sir Lancelot, the nickname of the Chevalier de la Charette.
And so was Hereward avenged of his enemies. Judicial, even private,
inquiry into the matter there was none. That gentlemen should meet in
the forest and commit, or try to commit, murder on each other’s bodies,
was far too common a mishap in the ages of faith to stir up more than an
extra gossiping and cackling among the women, and an extra cursing and
threatening among the men; and as the former were all but unanimously on
Hereward’s side, his plain and honest story was taken as it stood.
“And now, fair lady,” said Hereward to his hostess, “I must thank you
for all your hospitality, and bid you farewell forever and a day.”
She wept, and entreated him only to stay till her lord came back; but
Hereward was firm.
“You, lady, and your good lord will I ever love; and at your service
my sword shall ever be: but not here. Ill blood I will not make. Among
traitors I will not dwell. I have killed two of them, and shall have
to kill two of their kinsmen next, and then two more, till you have no
knights left; and pity that would be. No; the world is wide, and there
are plenty of good fellows in it who will welcome me without forcing me
to wear mail under my coat out hunting.”
And he armed himself _cap-à-pié_, and rode away. Great was the weeping
in the bower, and great the chuckling in the hall: but never saw they
Hereward again upon the Scottish shore.