HOW HEREWARD SUCCORED A PRINCESS OF CORNWALL.
The next place in which Hereward appeared was far away on the southwest,
upon the Cornish shore. How he came there, or after how long, the
chronicles do not say. All that shall be told is, that he went into port
on board a merchant ship carrying wine, and intending to bring back tin.
The merchants had told him of one Alef, a valiant _regulus_ or kinglet
of those parts, who was indeed a distant connection of Hereward himself,
having married, as did so many of the Celtic princes, the daughter of a
Danish sea-rover, of Siward’s blood. They told him also that the kinglet
increased his wealth, not only by the sale of tin and of red cattle,
but by a certain amount of autumnal piracy in company with his Danish
brothers-in-law from Dublin and Waterford; and Hereward, who believed,
with most Englishmen of the East Country, that Cornwall still produced
a fair crop of giants, some of them with two and even three heads, had
hopes that Alef might show him some adventure worthy of his sword. He
sailed in, therefore, over a rolling bar, between jagged points of black
rock, and up a tide river which wandered away inland, like a land-locked
lake, between high green walls of oak and ash, till they saw at the head
of the tide Alef’s town, nestling in a glen which sloped towards the
southern sun. They discovered, besides, two ships drawn up upon the
beach, whose long lines and snake-heads, beside the stoat carved on the
beak-head of one and the adder on that of the other, bore witness to
the piratical habits of their owner. The merchants, it seemed, were
well known to the Cornishmen on shore, and Hereward went up with them
unopposed; past the ugly dikes and muddy leats, where Alef’s slaves were
streaming the gravel for tin ore; through rich alluvial pastures
spotted with red cattle, and up to Alef’s town. Earthworks and stockades
surrounded a little church of ancient stone, and a cluster of granite
cabins thatched with turf, in which the slaves abode, and in the centre
of all a vast stone barn, with low walls and high sloping roof, which
contained Alef’s family, treasures, fighting tail, horses, cattle, and
pigs. They entered at one end between the pigsties, passed on through
the cow-stalls, then through the stables, and saw before them, dim
through the reek of thick peat-smoke, a long oaken table, at which sat
huge dark-haired Cornishmen, with here and there among them the yellow
head of a Norseman, who were Alef’s following or fighting men. Boiled
meat was there in plenty, barley cakes, and ale. At the head of the
table, on a high-backed settle, was Alef himself, a jolly giant, who
was just setting to work to drink himself stupid with mead made from
narcotic heather honey. By his side sat a lovely dark-haired girl, with
great gold torcs upon her throat and wrists, and a great gold brooch
fastening a shawl which had plainly come from the looms of Spain or of
the East, and next to her again, feeding her with titbits cut off with
his own dagger, and laid on barley cake instead of a plate, sat a more
gigantic personage even than Alef, the biggest man that Hereward had
ever seen, with high cheek bones, and small ferret eyes, looking out
from a greasy mass of bright red hair and beard.
No questions were asked of the new-comers. They set themselves down
in silence in empty places, and, according to the laws of the good old
Cornish hospitality, were allowed to eat and drink their fill before
they spoke a word.
“Welcome here again, friend,” said Alef at last, in good enough Danish,
calling the eldest merchant by name. “Do you bring wine?”
The merchant nodded.
“And you want tin?”
The merchant nodded again, and lifting his cup drank Alef’s health,
following it up by a coarse joke in Cornish, which raised a laugh all
round.
The Norse trader of those days, it must be remembered, was none of the
cringing and effeminate chapmen who figure in the stories of the Middle
Ages. A free Norse or Dane, himself often of noble blood, he fought as
willingly as he bought; and held his own as an equal, whether at the
court of a Cornish kinglet or at that of the Great Kaiser of the Greeks.
“And you, fair sir,” said Alef, looking keenly at Hereward, “by what
name shall I call you, and what service can I do for you? You look more
like an earl’s son than a merchant, and are come here surely for other
things besides tin.”
“Health to King Alef,” said Hereward, raising the cup. “Who I am I will
tell to none but Alef’s self; but an earl’s son I am, though an outlaw
and a rover. My lands are the breadth of my boot-sole. My plough is my
sword. My treasure is my good right hand. Nothing I have, and nothing I
need, save to serve noble kings and earls, and win me a champion’s fame.
If you have battles to fight, tell me, that I may fight them for you. If
you have none, thank God for his peace; and let me eat and drink, and go
in peace.”
“King Alef needs neither man nor boy to fight his battle as long as
Ironhook sits in his hall.”
It was the red-bearded giant who spoke in a broken tongue, part Scotch,
part Cornish, part Danish, which Hereward could hardly understand; but
that the ogre intended to insult him he understood well enough.
Hereward had hoped to find giants in Cornwall: and behold he had found
one at once; though rather, to judge from his looks, a Pictish than a
Cornish giant; and, true to his reckless determination to defy and fight
every man and beast who was willing to defy and fight him, he turned on
his elbow and stared at Ironhook in scorn, meditating some speech which
might provoke the hoped-for quarrel.
As he did so his eye happily caught that of the fair Princess. She was
watching him with a strange look, admiring, warning, imploring; and when
she saw that he noticed her, she laid her finger on her lip in token of
silence, crossed herself devoutly, and then laid her finger on her lips
again, as if beseeching him to be patient and silent in the name of Him
who answered not again.
Hereward, as is well seen, wanted not for quick wit, or for chivalrous
feeling. He had observed the rough devotion of the giant to the Lady.
He had observed, too, that she shrank from it; that she turned away with
loathing when he offered her his own cup, while he answered by a dark
and deadly scowl.
Was there an adventure here? Was she in duress either from this Ironhook
or from her father, or from both? Did she need Hereward’s help? If so,
she was so lovely that he could not refuse it. And on the chance, he
swallowed down his high stomach, and answered blandly enough,--
“One could see without eyes, noble sir, that you were worth any ten
common men; but as every one has not like you the luck of so lovely a
lady by your side, I thought that perchance you might hand over some of
your lesser quarrels to one like me, who has not yet seen so much good
fighting as yourself, and enjoy yourself in pleasant company at home, as
I should surely do in your place.”
The Princess shuddered and turned pale; then looked at Hereward and
smiled her thanks. Ironhook laughed a savage laugh.
Hereward’s jest being translated into Cornish for the benefit of the
company, was highly approved by all; and good humor being restored,
every man got drunk save Hereward, who found the mead too sweet and
sickening.
After which those who could go to bed went to bed, not as in England,
[Footnote: Cornwall was not then considered part of England.] among the
rushes on the floor, but in the bunks or berths of wattle which stood
two or three tiers high along the wall.
The next morning as Hereward went out to wash his face and hands in
the brook below (he being the only man in the house who did so), Martin
Lightfoot followed him.
“What is it, Martin? Hast thou had too much of that sweet mead last
night that thou must come out to cool thy head too?”
“I came out for two reasons,--first, to see fair play, in case that
Ironhook should come to wash his ugly visage, and find you on all fours
over the brook--you understand? And next, to tell you what I heard last
night among the maids.”
“And what did you hear?”
“Fine adventures, if we can but compass them. You saw that lady with the
carrot-headed fellow?--I saw that you saw. Well, if you will believe me,
that man has no more gentle blood than I have,--has no more right to sit
on the settle than I. He is a No-man’s son, a Pict from Galloway, who
came down with a pirate crew and has made himself the master of this
drunken old Prince, and the darling of all his housecarles, and now will
needs be his son-in-law whether he will or not.”
“I thought as much,” said Hereward; “but how didst thou find out this?”
“I went out and sat with the knaves and the maids, and listened to their
harp-playing, and harp they can, these Cornish, like very elves; and
then I, too, sang songs and told them stories, for I can talk their
tongue somewhat, till they all blest me for a right good fellow. And
then I fell to praising up old Ironhook to the women.”
“Praising him up, man?”
“Ay, just because I suspected him; for the women are so contrary, that
if you speak evil of a man they will surely speak good of him; but if
you will only speak good of him, then you will hear all the evil of him
he ever has done, and more beside. And this I heard; that the King’s
daughter cannot abide him, and would as lief marry a seal.”
“One did not need to be told that,” said Hereward, “as long as one
has eyes in one’s head. I will kill the fellow, and carry her off, ere
four-and-twenty hours be past.”
“Softly, softly, my young master. You need to be told something that
your eyes would not tell you, and that is, that the poor lass is
betrothed already to a son of old King Ranald the Ostman, of Waterford,
son of old King Sigtryg, who ruled there when I was a boy.”
“He is a kinsman of mine, then,” said Hereward. “All the more reason
that I should kill this ruffian.”
“If you can,” said Martin Lightfoot.
“If I can?” retorted Hereward, fiercely.
“Well, well, wilful heart must have its way; only take my counsel: speak
to the poor young lady first, and see what she will tell you, lest you
only make bad worse, and bring down her father and his men on her as
well as you.”
Hereward agreed, and resolved to watch his opportunity of speaking to
the princess.
As they went in to the morning meal they met Alef. He was in high good
humor with Hereward; and all the more so when Hereward told him his
name, and how he was the son of Leofric.
“I will warrant you are,” he said, “by the gray head you carry on green
shoulders. No discreeter man, they say, in these isles than the old
earl.”
“You speak truth, sir,” said Hereward, “though he be no father of mine
now; for of Leofric it is said in King Edward’s court, that if a man ask
counsel of him, it is as though he had asked it of the oracles of God.”
“Then you are his true son, young man. I saw how you kept the peace with
Ironhook, and I owe you thanks for it; for though he is my good friend,
and will be my son-in-law erelong, yet a quarrel with him is more than
I can abide just now, and I should not like to have seen my guest and my
kinsman slain in my house.”
Hereward would have said that he thought there was no fear of that;
but he prudently held his tongue, and having an end to gain, listened
instead of talking.
“Twenty years ago, of course, I could have thrashed him as easily as--;
but now I am getting old and shaky, and the man has been a great help
in need. Six kings of these parts has he killed for me, who drove off
my cattle, and stopped my tin works, and plundered my monks’ cells too,
which is worse, while I was away sailing the seas; and he is a right
good fellow at heart, though he be a little rough. So be friends with
him as long as you stay here, and if I can do you a service I will.”
They went in to their morning meal, at which Hereward resolved to
keep the peace which he longed to break, and therefore, as was to be
expected, broke.
For during the meal the fair lady, with no worse intention, perhaps,
than that of teasing her tyrant, fell to open praises of Hereward’s
fair face and golden hair; and being insulted therefore by the Ironhook,
retaliated by observations about his personal appearance, which were
more common in the eleventh century than they happily are now. He,
to comfort himself, drank deep of the French wine which had just been
brought and broached, and then went out into the court-yard, where,
in the midst of his admiring fellow-ruffians, he enacted a scene as
ludicrous as it was pitiable. All the childish vanity of the savage
boiled over. He strutted, he shouted, he tossed about his huge limbs,
he called for a harper, and challenged all around to dance, sing,
leap, fight, do anything against him: meeting with nothing but admiring
silence, he danced himself out of breath, and then began boasting
once more of his fights, his cruelties, his butcheries, his impossible
escapes and victories; till at last, as luck would have it, he espied
Hereward, and poured out a stream of abuse against Englishmen and
English courage.
“Englishmen,” he said, “were naught. Had he not slain three of them
himself with one blow?”
“Of your mouth, I suppose,” quoth Hereward, who saw that the quarrel
must come, and was glad to have it done and over.
“Of my mouth?” roared Ironhook; “of my sword, man!”
“Of your mouth,” said Hereward. “Of your brain were they begotten, of
the breath of your mouth they were born, and by the breath of your mouth
you can slay them again as often as you choose.”
The joke, as it has been handed down to us by the old chroniclers,
seems clumsy enough; but it sent the princess, say they, into shrieks of
laughter.
“Were it not that my Lord Alef was here,” shouted Ironhook, “I would
kill you out of hand.”
“Promise to fight fair, and do your worst. The more fairly you fight,
the more honor you will win,” said Hereward.
Whereupon the two were parted for the while.
Two hours afterwards, Hereward, completely armed with helmet and mail
shirt, sword and javelin, hurried across the great court-yard, with
Martin Lightfoot at his heels, towards the little church upon the knoll
above. The two wild men entered into the cool darkness, and saw before
them, by the light of a tiny lamp, the crucifix over the altar, and
beneath it that which was then believed to be the body of Him who
made heaven and earth. They stopped, trembling, for a moment, bowed
themselves before that, to them, perpetual miracle, and then hurried on
to a low doorway to the right, inside which dwelt Alef’s chaplain,
one of those good Celtic priests who were supposed to represent a
Christianity more ancient than, and all but independent of, the then
all-absorbing Church of Rome.
The cell was such a one as a convict would now disdain to inhabit. A low
lean-to roof; the slates and rafters unceiled; the stone walls and floor
unplastered; ill-lighted by a hand-broad window, unglazed, and closed
with a shutter at night. A truss of straw and a rug, the priest’s
bed, lay in a corner. The only other furniture was a large oak chest,
containing the holy vessels and vestments and a few old books. It stood
directly under the window for the sake of light, for it served the good
priest for both table and chair; and on it he was sitting reading in his
book at that minute, the sunshine and the wind streaming in behind his
head, doing no good to his rheumatism of thirty years’ standing.
“Is there a priest here?” asked Hereward, hurriedly.
The old man looked up, shook his head, and answered in Cornish.
“Speak to him in Latin, Martin! Maybe he will understand that.”
Martin spoke. “My lord, here, wants a priest to shrive him, and that
quickly. He is going to fight the great tyrant Ironhook, as you call
him.”
“Ironhook?” answered the priest in good Latin enough. “And he so young!
God help him, he is a dead man! What is this,--a fresh soul sent to its
account by the hands of that man of Belial? Cannot he entreat him,--can
he not make peace, and save his young life? He is but a stripling, and
that man, like Goliath of old, a man of war from his youth up.”
“And my master,” said Martin Lightfoot, proudly, “is like young
David,--one that can face a giant and kill him; for he has slain, like
David, his lion and his bear ere now. At least, he is one that will
neither make peace, nor entreat the face of living man. So shrive him
quickly, Master Priest, and let him be gone to his work.”
Poor Martin Lightfoot spoke thus bravely only to keep up his spirits and
his young lord’s; for, in spite of his confidence in Hereward’s prowess,
he had given him up for a lost man: and the tears ran down his rugged
cheeks, as the old priest, rising up and seizing Hereward’s two hands
in his, besought him, with the passionate and graceful eloquence of his
race, to have mercy upon his own youth.
Hereward understood his meaning, though not his words.
“Tell him,” he said to Martin, “that fight I must, and tell him that
shrive me he must, and that quickly. Tell him how the fellow met me in
the wood below just now, and would have slain me there, unarmed as I
was; and how, when I told him it was a shame to strike a naked man, he
told me he would give me but one hour’s grace to go back, on the faith
of a gentleman, for my armor and weapons, and meet him there again, to
die by his hand. So shrive me quick, Sir Priest.”
Hereward knelt down. Martin Lightfoot knelt down by him, and with a
trembling voice began to interpret for him.
“What does he say?” asked Hereward, as the priest murmured something to
himself.
“He said,” quoth Martin, now fairly blubbering, “that, fair and young as
you are, your shrift should be as short and as clean as David’s.”
Hereward was touched. “Anything but that,” said he, smiting on his
breast, “Mea culpa,--mea culpa,--mea maxima culpa.”
“Tell him how I robbed my father.”
The priest groaned as Martin did so.
“And how I mocked at my mother, and left her in a rage, without ever a
kind word between us. And how I have slain I know not how many men in
battle, though that, I trust, need not lay heavily on my soul, seeing
that I killed them all in fair fight.”
Again the priest groaned.
“And how I robbed a certain priest of his money and gave it away to my
housecarles.”
Here the priest groaned more bitterly still.
“O my son! my son! where hast thou found time to lay all these burdens
on thy young soul?”
“It will take less time,” said Martin, bluntly, “for you to take the
burdens off again.”
“But I dare not absolve him for robbing a priest. Heaven Help him! He
must go to the bishop for that. He is more fit to go on pilgrimage to
Jerusalem than to battle.”
“He has no time,” quoth Martin, “for bishops or Jerusalem.”
“Tell him,” says Hereward, “that in this purse is all I have, that in it
he will find sixty silver pennies, beside two strange coins of gold.”
“Sir Priest,” said Martin Lightfoot, taking the purse from Hereward, and
keeping it in his own hand, “there are in this bag moneys.”
Martin had no mind to let the priest into the secret of the state of
their finances.
“And tell him,” continued Hereward, “that if I fall in this battle I
give him all that money, that he may part it among the poor for the good
of my soul.”
“Pish!” said Martin to his lord; “that is paying him for having you
killed. You should pay him for keeping you alive.” And without waiting
for the answer, he spoke in Latin,--
“And if he comes back safe from this battle, he will give you ten
pennies for yourself and your church, Priest, and therefore expects you
to pray your very loudest while he is gone.”
“I will pray, I will pray,” said the holy man; “I will wrestle in
prayer. Ah that he could slay the wicked, and reward the proud according
to his deservings! Ah that he could rid me and my master, and my young
lady, of this son of Belial,--this devourer of widows and orphans,--this
slayer of the poor and needy, who fills this place with innocent
blood,--him of whom it is written, ‘They stretch forth their mouth unto
the heaven, and their tongue goeth through the world. Therefore fall
the people unto them, and thereout suck they no small advantage.’ I will
shrive him, shrive him of all save robbing the priest, and for that he
must go to the bishop, if he live; and if not, the Lord have mercy on
his soul.”
And so, weeping and trembling, the good old man pronounced the words of
absolution.
Hereward rose, thanked him, and then hurried out in silence.
“You will pray your very loudest, Priest,” said Martin, as he followed
his young lord.
“I will, I will,” quoth he, and kneeling down began to chant that noble
seventy-third Psalm, “Quam bonus Israel,” which he had just so fitly
quoted.
“Thou gavest him the bag, Martin?” said Hereward, as they hurried on.
“You are not dead yet. ‘No pay, no play,’ is as good a rule for priest
as for layman.”
“Now then, Martin Lightfoot, good-bye. Come not with me. It must never
be said, even slanderously, that I brought two into the field against
one; and if I die, Martin--”
“You won’t die!” said Lightfoot, shutting his teeth.
“If I die, go back to my people somehow, and tell them that I died like
a true earl’s son.”
Hereward held out his hand; Martin fell on his knees and kissed it;
watched him with set teeth till he disappeared in the wood; and then
started forward and entered the bushes at a different spot.
“I must be nigh at hand to see fair play,” he muttered to himself, “in
case any of his ruffians be hanging about. Fair play I’ll see, and
fair play I’ll give, too, for the sake of my lord’s honor, though I be
bitterly loath to do it. So many times as I have been a villain when it
was of no use, why mayn’t I be one now, when it would serve the purpose
indeed? Why did we ever come into this accursed place? But one thing I
will do,” said he, as he ensconced himself under a thick holly, whence
he could see the meeting of the combatants upon an open lawn some twenty
yards away; “if that big bull-calf kills my master, and I do not jump on
his back and pick his brains out with this trusty steel of mine, may my
right arm--”
And Martin Lightfoot swore a fearful oath, which need not here be
written.
The priest had just finished his chant of the seventy-third Psalm, and
had betaken himself in his spiritual warfare, as it was then called, to
the equally apposite fifty-second, “Quid gloriaris?”
“Why boastest thou thyself, thou tyrant, that thou canst do mischief,
whereas the goodness of God endureth yet daily?”
“Father! father!” cried a soft voice in the doorway, “where are you?”
And in hurried the Princess.
“Hide this,” she said, breathless, drawing from beneath her mantle a
huge sword; “hide it, where no one dare touch it, under the altar behind
the holy rood: no place too secret.”
“What is it?” asked the priest, springing up from his knees.
“His sword,--the Ogre’s,--his magic sword, which kills whomsoever it
strikes. I coaxed the wretch to let me have it last night when he was
tipsy, for fear he should quarrel with the young stranger; and I have
kept it from him ever since by one excuse or another; and now he has
sent one of his ruffians in for it, saying, that if I do not give it up
at once he will come back and kill me.”
“He dare not do that,” said the priest.
“What is there that he dare not?” said she. “Hide it at once; I know
that he wants it to fight with this Hereward.”
“If he wants it for that,” said the priest, “it is too late; for half an
hour is past since Hereward went to meet him.”
“And you let him go? You did not persuade him, stop him? You let him go
hence to his death?”
In vain the good man expostulated and explained that it was no fault of
his.
“You must come with me this instant to my father,--to them; they must
be parted. They shall be parted. If you dare not, I dare. I will throw
myself between them, and he that strikes the other shall strike me.”
And she hurried the priest out of the house, down the knoll, and across
the yard. There they found others on the same errand. The news that a
battle was toward had soon spread, and the men-at-arms were hurrying
down to the fight; kept back, however, by Alef, who strode along at
their head.
Alef was sorely perplexed in mind. He had taken, as all honest men did,
a great liking to Hereward. Moreover, he was his kinsman and his guest.
Save him he would if he could but how to save him without mortally
offending his tyrant Ironhook he could not see. At least he would exert
what little power he had, and prevent, if possible, his men-at-arms from
helping their darling leader against the hapless lad.
Alef’s perplexity was much increased when his daughter bounded towards
him, seizing him by the arm, and hurried him on, showing by look and
word which of the combatants she favored, so plainly that the ruffians
behind broke into scornful murmurs. They burst through the bushes.
Martin Lightfoot, happily, heard them coming, and had just time to slip
away noiselessly, like a rabbit, to the other part of the cover.
The combat seemed at the first glance to be one between a grown man and
a child, so unequal was the size of the combatants. But the second look
showed that the advantage was by no means with Ironhook. Stumbling to
and fro with the broken shaft of a javelin sticking in his thigh, he
vainly tried to seize and crush Hereward in his enormous arms. Hereward,
bleeding, but still active and upright, broke away, and sprang
round him, watching for an opportunity to strike a deadly blow. The
housecarles rushed forward with yells. Alef shouted to the combatants to
desist; but ere the party could reach them, Hereward’s opportunity had
come. Ironhook, after a fruitless lunge, stumbled forward. Hereward
leapt aside, and spying an unguarded spot below the corslet, drove his
sword deep into the giant’s body, and rolled him over upon the sward.
Then arose shouts of fury.
“Foul play!” cried one.
And others taking up the cry, called out, “Sorcery!” and “Treason!”
Hereward stood over Ironhook as he lay writhing and foaming on the
ground.
“Killed by a boy at last!” groaned he. “If I had but had my own
sword,--my Brain-biter which that witch stole from me but last
night!”--and amid foul curses and bitter tears of shame his mortal
spirit fled to its doom.
The housecarles rushed in on Hereward, who had enough to do to keep them
at arm’s length by long sweeps of his sword.
Alef entreated, threatened, promised a fair trial if the men would give
fair play; when, to complete the confusion, the Princess threw herself
upon the corpse, shrieking and tearing her hair; and to Hereward’s
surprise and disgust, bewailed the prowess and the virtues of the dead,
calling upon all present to avenge his murder.
Hereward vowed inwardly that he would never again trust woman’s fancy
or fight in woman’s quarrel. He was now nigh at his wits’ end; the
housecarles had closed round him in a ring with the intention of seizing
him; and however well he might defend his front, he might be crippled
at any moment from behind: but in the very nick of time Martin Lightfoot
burst through the crowd, set himself heel to heel with his master, and
broke out, not with threats, but with a good-humored laugh.
“Here is a pretty coil about a red-headed brute of a Pict! Danes,
Ostmen,” he cried, “are you not ashamed to call such a fellow your lord,
when you have such a true earl’s son as this to lead you if you will?”
The Ostmen in the company looked at each other. Martin Lightfoot saw
that his appeal to the antipathies of race had told, and followed it up
by a string of witticisms upon the Pictish nation in general, of
which the only two fit for modern ears to be set down were the two old
stories, that the Picts had feet so large that they used to lie upon
their backs and hold up their legs to shelter them from the sun; and
that when killed, they could not fall down, but died as they were, all
standing.
“So that the only foul play I can see is, that my master shoved the
fellow over after he had stabbed him, instead of leaving him to stand
upright there, like one of your Cornish Dolmens, till his flesh should
fall off his bones.”
Hereward saw the effect of Martin’s words, and burst out in Danish
likewise.
“Look at me!” he said; “I am Hereward the outlaw, I am the champion, I
am the Berserker, I am the Viking, I am the land thief, the sea
thief, the ravager of the world, the bear-slayer, the ogre-killer, the
raven-fattener, the darling of the wolf, the curse of the widow. Touch
me, and I will give you to the raven and to the wolf, as I have this
ogre. Be my men, and follow me over the swan’s road, over the whale’s
bath, over the long-snake’s leap, to the land where the sea meets the
sun, and golden apples hang on every tree; and we will freight our ships
with Moorish maidens, and the gold of Cadiz and Algiers.”
“Hark to the Viking! Hark to the right earl’s son!” shouted some of
the Danes, whose blood had been stirred many a time before by such wild
words, and on whom Hereward’s youth and beauty had their due effect. And
now the counsels of the ruffians being divided, the old priest gained
courage to step in. Let them deliver Hereward and his serving man into
his custody. He would bring them forth on the morrow, and there should
be full investigation and fair trial. And so Hereward and Martin, who
both refused stoutly to give up their arms, were marched back into the
town, locked in the little church, and left to their meditations.
Hereward sat down on the pavement and cursed the Princess. Martin
Lightfoot took off his master’s corslet, and, as well as the darkness
would allow, bound up his wounds, which happily were not severe.
“Were I you,” said he at last, “I should keep my curses till I saw the
end of this adventure.”
“Has not the girl betrayed me shamefully?”
“Not she. I saw her warn you, as far as looks could do, not to quarrel
with the man.”
“That was because she did not know me. Little she thought that I
could--”
“Don’t hollo till you are out of the wood. This is a night for praying
rather than boasting.”
“She cannot really love that wretch,” said Hereward, after a pause. “You
saw how she mocked him.”
“Women are strange things, and often tease most where they love most.”
“But such a misbegotten savage.”
“Women are strange things, say I, and with some a big fellow is a pretty
fellow, be he uglier than seven Ironhooks. Still, just because women are
strange things, have patience, say I.”
The lock creaked, and the old priest came in. Martin leapt to the
open door; but it was slammed in his face by men outside with scornful
laughter.
The priest took Hereward’s head in his hands, wept over him, blessed him
for having slain Goliath like young David, and then set food and drink
before the two; but he answered Martin’s questions only with sighs and
shakings of the head.
“Let us eat and drink, then,” said Martin, “and after that you, my lord,
sleep off your wounds while I watch the door. I have no fancy for these
fellows taking us unawares at night.”
Martin lay quietly across the door till the small hours, listening to
every sound, till the key creaked once more in the lock. He started at
the sound, and seizing the person who entered round the neck, whispered,
“One word, and you are dead.”
“Do not hurt me,” half shrieked a stifled voice; and Martin Lightfoot,
to his surprise, found that he had grasped no armed man, but the slight
frame of a young girl.
“I am the Princess,” she whispered; “let me in.”
“A very pretty hostage for us,” thought Martin, and letting her go
seized the key, locking the door in the inside.
“Take me to your master,” she cried, and Martin led her up the church
wondering, but half suspecting some further trap.
“You have a dagger in your hand,” said he, holding her wrist.
“I have. If I had meant to use it, it would have been used first on you.
Take it, if you like.”
She hurried up to Hereward, who lay sleeping quietly on the altar-steps;
knelt by him, wrung his hands, called him her champion, her deliverer.
“I am not well awake yet,” said he, coldly, “and don’t know whether this
may not be a dream, as more that I have seen and heard seems to be.”
“It is no dream. I am true. I was always true to you. Have I not put
myself in your power? Am I not come here to deliver you, my deliverer?”
“The tears which you shed over your ogre’s corpse seem to have dried
quickly enough.”
“Cruel! What else could I do? You heard him accuse me to those ruffians
of having stolen his sword. My life, my father’s life, were not safe
a moment, had I not dissembled, and done the thing I loathed. Ah!” she
went on, bitterly, “you men, who rule the world and us by cruel steel,
you forget that we poor women have but one weapon left wherewith to hold
our own, and that is cunning; and are driven by you day after day to
tell the lie which we detest.”
“Then you really stole his sword?”
“And hid it here, for your sake!” and she drew the weapon from behind
the altar.
“Take it. It is yours now. It is magical. Whoever smites with it, need
never smite again. Now, quick, you must be gone. But promise one thing
before you go.”
“If I leave this land safe, I will do it, be it what it may. Why not
come with me, lady, and see it done?”
She laughed. “Vain boy, do you think that I love you well enough for
that?”
“I have won you, and why should I not keep you?” said Hereward,
sullenly.
“Do you not know that I am betrothed to your kinsman? And--though that
you cannot know--that I love your kinsman?”
“So I have all the blows, and none of the spoil.”
“Tush! you have the glory,-and the sword,--and the chance, if you will
do my bidding, of being called by all ladies a true and gentle knight,
who cared not for his own pleasure, but for deeds of chivalry. Go to my
betrothed,--to Waterford over the sea. Take him this ring, and tell
him by that token to come and claim me soon, lest he run the danger of
losing me a second time, and lose me then forever; for I am in hard
case here, and were it not for my father’s sake, perhaps I might be weak
enough, in spite of what men might say, to flee with you to your kinsman
across the sea.”
“Trust me and come,” said Hereward, whose young blood kindled with a
sudden nobleness,--“trust me, and I will treat you like my sister, like
my queen. By the holy rood above I will swear to be true to you.”
“I do trust you, but it cannot be. Here is money for you in plenty to
hire a passage if you need: it is no shame to take it from me. And now
one thing more. Here is a cord,--you must bind the hands and feet of the
old priest inside, and then you must bind mine likewise.”
“Never,” quoth Hereward.
“It must be. How else can I explain your having got the key? I made them
give me the key on the pretence that with one who had most cause to hate
you, it would be safe; and when they come and find us in the morning I
shall tell them how I came here to stab you with my own hands,--you must
lay the dagger by me,--and how you and your man fell upon us and bound
us, and you escaped. Ah! Mary Mother,” continued the maiden with a sigh,
“when shall we poor weak women have no more need of lying?”
She lay down, and Hereward, in spite of himself, gently bound her hands
and feet, kissing them as he bound them.
“I shall do well here upon the altar steps,” said she. “How can I spend
my time better till the morning light than to lie here and pray?”
The old priest, who was plainly in the plot, submitted meekly to the
same fate; and Hereward and Martin Lightfoot stole out, locking the
door, but leaving the key in it outside. To scramble over the old
earthwork was an easy matter; and in a few minutes they were hurrying
down the valley to the sea, with a fresh breeze blowing behind them from
the north.
“Did I not tell you, my lord,” said Martin Lightfoot, “to keep your
curses till you had seen the end of this adventure?”
Hereward was silent. His brain was still whirling from the adventures
of the day, and his heart was very deeply touched. His shrift of the
morning, hurried and formal as it had been, had softened him. His
danger--for he felt how he had been face to face with death--had
softened him likewise; and he repented somewhat of his vainglorious and
bloodthirsty boasting over a fallen foe, as he began to see that there
was a purpose more noble in life than ranging land and sea, a ruffian
among ruffians, seeking for glory amid blood and flame. The idea of
chivalry, of succoring the weak and the opprest, of keeping faith and
honor not merely towards men who could avenge themselves, but towards
women who could not; the dim dawn of purity, gentleness, and the
conquest of his own fierce passions,--all these had taken root in his
heart during his adventure with the fair Cornish girl. The seed was
sown. Would it he cut down again by the bitter blasts of the rough
fighting world, or would it grow and bear the noble fruit of “gentle
very perfect knighthood”?
They reached the ship, clambered on hoard without ceremony, at the risk
of being taken and killed as robbers, and told their case. The merchants
had not completed their cargo of tin. Hereward offered to make up their
loss to them if they would set sail at once; and they, feeling that the
place would be for some time to come too hot to hold them, and being
also in high delight, like honest Ostmen, with Hereward’s prowess,
agreed to sail straight for Waterford, and complete their cargo there.
But the tide was out. It was three full hours before the ship could
float; and for three full hours they waited in fear and trembling,
expecting the Cornishmen to be down upon them in a body every moment,
under which wholesome fear some on board prayed fervently who had never
been known to pray before.