HOW HEREWARD WAS WRECKED UPON THE FLANDERS SHORE.
Hereward had drunk his share at Sigtryg’s wedding. He had helped to
harry the lands of O’Brodar till (as King Ranald had threatened) there
was not a sucking-pig left in Ivark, and the poor folk died of famine,
as they did about every seven years; he had burst (says the chronicler)
through the Irish camp with a chosen band of Berserkers, slain O’Brodar
in his tent, brought off his war-horn as a trophy, and cut his way back
to the Danish army,--a feat in which the two Siwards were grievously
wounded; and had in all things shown himself a daring and crafty
captain, as careless of his own life as of other folks’.
Then a great home-sickness had seized him. He would go back and see
the old house, and the cattle-pastures, and the meres and fens of his
boyhood. He would see his widowed mother. Perhaps her heart was softened
to him by now, as his was toward her; and if not, he could show her that
he could do without her; that others thought him a fine fellow if she
did not. Hereward knew that he had won honor and glory for himself;
that his name was in the mouths of all warriors and sea-rovers round the
coasts as the most likely young champion of the time, able to rival, if
he had the opportunity, the prowess of Harold Hardraade himself. Yes,
he would go and see his mother: he would be kind if she was kind; if she
were not, he would boast and swagger, as he was but too apt to do. That
he should go back at the risk of his life; that any one who found him on
English ground might kill him; and that many would certainly try to
kill him, he knew very well. But that only gave special zest to the
adventure.
Martin Lightfoot heard this news with joy.
“I have no more to do here,” said he. “I have searched and asked far and
wide for the man I want, and he is not on the Irish shores. Some say he
is gone to the Orkneys, some to Denmark. Never mind; I shall find him
before I die.”
“And for whom art looking?”
“For one Thord Gunlaugsson, my father.”
“And what wantest with him?”
“To put this through his brain.” And he showed his axe.
“Thy father’s brain?”
“Look you, lord. A man owes his father naught, and his mother all. At
least so hold I. ‘Man that is of woman born,’ say all the world; and
they say right. Now, if any man hang up that mother by hands and feet,
and flog her to death, is not he that is of that mother born bound to
revenge her upon any man, and all the more if that man had first his
wicked will of that poor mother? Considering that last, lord, I do not
know but what I am bound to avenge my mother’s shame upon the man, even
if he had never killed her. No, lord, you need not try to talk this out
of my head. It has been there nigh twenty years; and I say it over to
myself every night before I sleep, lest I should forget the one thing
which I must do before I die. Find him I will, and find him I shall, if
there be justice in heaven above.”
So Hereward asked Ranald for ships, and got at once two good vessels as
payment for his doughty deeds.
One he christened the _Garpike_, from her narrow build and long beak,
and the other the _Otter_, because, he said, whatever she grappled she
would never let go till she heard the bones crack. They were excellent,
new “snekrs,” nearly eighty feet long each; with double banks for twelve
oars a side in the waist, which was open, save a fighting gangway along
the sides; with high poop and forecastle decks; and with one large sail
apiece, embroidered by Sigtryg’s Princess and the other ladies with a
huge white bear, which Hereward had chosen as his ensign.
As for men, there were fifty fellows as desperate as Hereward himself,
to take service with him for that or any other quest. So they ballasted
their ships with great pebbles, stowed under the thwarts, to be used
as ammunition in case of boarding; and over them the barrels of ale and
pork and meal, well covered with tarpaulins. They stowed in the cabins,
fore and aft, their weapons,--swords, spears, axes, bows, chests of
arrow-heads, leather bags of bowstrings, mail-shirts, and helmets, and
fine clothes for holidays and fighting days. They hung their shields,
after the old fashion, out-board along the gunwale, and a right gay show
they made; and so rowed out of Waterford harbor amid the tears of the
ladies and the cheers of the men.
But, as it befell, the voyage did not prosper. Hereward found his
vessels under-manned, and had to sail northward for fresh hands. He got
none in Dublin, for they were all gone to the Welsh marches to help Earl
Alfgar and King Griffin. So he went on through the Hebrides, intending,
of course, to plunder as he went: but there he got but little booty, and
lost several men. So he went on again to the Orkneys, to try for fresh
hands from the Norse Earl Hereof; but there befell a fresh mishap. They
were followed by a whale, which they made sure was a witch-whale, and
boded more ill luck; and accordingly they were struck by a storm in the
Pentland Frith, and the poor _Garpike_ went on shore on Hoy, and was
left there forever and a day, her crew being hardly saved, and very
little of her cargo.
However, the _Otter_ was now not only manned, but over manned; and
Hereward had to leave a dozen stout fellows in Kirkwall, and sail
southward again, singing cheerily to his men,--
“Lightly the long-snake
Leaps after tempests,
Gayly the sun-gleam
Glows after rain
In labor and daring
Lies luck for all mortals,
Foul winds and foul witch-wives
Fray women alone.”
But their mishaps were not over yet. They were hardly out of Stronsay
Frith when they saw the witch-whale again, following them up, rolling
and spouting and breaching in most uncanny wise. Some said that they saw
a gray woman on his back; and they knew--possibly from the look of the
sky, but certainly from the whale’s behavior--that there was more heavy
weather yet coming from the northward.
From that day forward the whale never left them, nor the wild weather
neither. They were beaten out of all reckoning. Once they thought they
saw low land to the eastward, but what or where who could tell? and as
for making it, the wind, which had blown hard from northeast, backed
against the sun and blew from west; from which, as well as from
the witch-whale, they expected another gale from north and round to
northeast.
The men grew sulky and fearful. Some were for trying to run the witch
down and break her back, as did Frithiof in like case, when hunted by a
whale with two hags upon his back,--an excellent recipe in such cases,
but somewhat difficult in a heavy sea. Others said that there was a
doomed man on board, and proposed to cast lots till they found him out,
and cast him into the sea, as a sacrifice to Aegir the wave-god. But
Hereward scouted that as unmanly and cowardly, and sang,--
“With blood of my bold ones,
With bale of my comrades,
Thinks Aegir, brine-thirsty,
His throat he can slake?
Though salt spray, shrill-sounding,
Sweep in swan’s-flights above us,
True heroes, troth-plighted,
Together we’ll die.”
At last, after many days, their strength was all but worn out. They
had long since given over rowing, and contented themselves with running
under a close-reefed canvas whithersoever the storm should choose. At
night a sea broke over them, and would have swamped the _Otter_, had she
not been the best of sea-boats. But she only rolled the lee shields into
the water and out again, shook herself, and went on. Nevertheless, there
were three men on the poop when the sea came in, who were not there when
it went out.
Wet and wild dawned that morning, showing naught but gray sea and gray
air. Then sang Hereward,--
“Cheerly, my sea-cocks
Crow for the day-dawn.
Weary and wet are we,
Water beladen.
Wetter our comrades,
Whelmed by the witch-whale.
Us Aegir granted
Grudging, to Gondul,
Doomed to die dry-shod,
Daring the foe.”
Whereat the hearts of the men were much cheered.
All of a sudden, as is the wont of gales at dawn, the clouds rose, tore
up into ribbons, and with a fierce black shower or two, blew clean away;
disclosing a bright blue sky, a green rolling sea, and, a few miles off
to leeward, a pale yellow line, seen only as they topped a wave, but
seen only too well. To keep the ship off shore was impossible; and as
they drifted nearer and nearer, the line of sand-hills rose, uglier and
more formidable, through the gray spray of the surf.
“We shall die on shore, but not dry-shod,” said Martin. “Do any of you
knights of the tar-brush know whether we are going to be drowned in
Christian waters? I should like a mass or two for my soul, and shall die
the happier within sight of a church-tower.”
“One Dune is as like another as one pea; we may be anywhere between the
Texel and Cap Gris Nez, but I think nearer the latter than the former.”
“So much the worse for us,” said another. “If we had gone ashore
among those Frieslanders, we should have been only knocked on the head
outright; but if we fall among the Frenchmen, we shall be clapt in
prison strong, and tortured till we find ransom.”
“I don’t see that,” said Martin. “We can all be drowned if we like, I
suppose?”
“Drowned we need not be, if we be men,” said the old sailing-master to
Hereward. “The tide is full high, and that gives us one chance for our
lives. Keep her head straight, and row like fiends when we are once
in the surf, and then beach her up high and dry, and take what befalls
after.”
And what was likely to befall was ugly enough. Then, as centuries after,
all wrecks and wrecked men were public prey; shipwrecked mariners were
liable to be sold as slaves; and the petty counts of the French and
Flemish shores were but too likely to extract ransom by prison and
torture, as Guy Earl of Penthieu would have done (so at least William
Duke of Normandy hinted) by Harold Godwinsson, had not William, for his
own politic ends, begged the release of the shipwrecked earl.
Already they had been seen from the beach. The country folk, who were
prowling about the shore after the waifs of the storm, deserted “jetsom
and lagend,” and crowded to meet the richer prize which was coming in
“flotsom,” to become “jetsom” in its turn.
“Axe-men and bow-men, put on your harness, and be ready; but neither
strike nor shoot till I give the word. We must land peaceably if we can;
if not, we will die fighting.”
So said Hereward, and took the rudder into his own hand. “Now then,”
as she rushed into the breakers, “pull together, rowers all, and with a
will.”
The men yelled, and sprang from the thwarts as they tugged at the oars.
The sea boiled past them, surged into the waist, blinded them with
spray. She grazed the sand once, twice, thrice, leaping forward
gallantly each time; and then, pressed by a huge wave, drove high
and dry upon the beach, as the oars snapt right and left, and the men
tumbled over each other in heaps.
The peasants swarmed down like flies to a carcass; but they recoiled as
there rose over the forecastle bulwarks, not the broad hats of peaceful
buscarles, but peaked helmets, round red shields, and glittering axes.
They drew back, and one or two arrows flew from the crowd into the ship.
But at Hereward’s command no arrows were shot in answer.
“Bale her out quietly; and let us show these fellows that we are not
afraid of them. That is the best chance of peace.”
At this moment a mounted party came down between the sandhills; it might
be, some twenty strong. Before them rode a boy on a jennet, and by him
a clerk, as he seemed, upon a mule. They stopped to talk with the
peasants, and then to consult among themselves. Suddenly the boy turned
from his party; and galloping down the shore, while the clerk called
after him in vain, reined up his horse, fetlock deep in water, within
ten yards of the ship’s bows.
“Yield yourselves!” he shouted, in French, as he brandished a hunting
spear. “Yield yourselves, or die!”
Hereward looked at him smiling, as he sat there, keeping the head of
his frightened horse toward the ship with hand and heel, his long locks
streaming in the wind, his face full of courage and command, and of
honesty and sweetness withal; and thought that he had never seen so fair
a lad.
“And who art thou, thou pretty, bold boy?” asked Hereward, in French.
“I,” said he, haughtily enough, as resenting Hereward’s familiar “thou,”
“am Arnulf, grandson and heir of Baldwin, Marquis of Flanders, and lord
of this land. And to his grace I call on you to surrender yourselves.”
Hereward looked, not only with interest, but respect, upon the grandson
of one of the most famous and prosperous of northern potentates, the
descendant of the mighty Charlemagne himself. He turned and told the men
who the boy was.
“It would be a good trick,” quoth one, “to catch that young whelp, and
keep him as a hostage.”
“Here is what will have him on board before he can turn,” said another,
as he made a running noose in a rope.
“Quiet, men! Am I master in this ship or you?”
Hereward saluted the lad courteously. “Verily the blood of Baldwin of
the Iron Arm has not degenerated. I am happy to behold so noble a son of
so noble a race.”
“And who are you, who speak French so well, and yet by your dress are
neither French nor Fleming?”
“I am Harold Naemansson, the Viking; and these my men. I am here,
sailing peaceably for England; as for yielding,--mine yield to no
living man, but die as we are, weapon in hand. I have heard of your
grandfather, that he is a just man and a bountiful; therefore take this
message to him, young sir. If he have wars toward, I and my men will
fight for him with all our might, and earn hospitality and ransom with
our only treasure, which is our swords. But if he be at peace, then let
him bid us go in peace, for we are Vikings, and must fight, or rot and
die.”
“You are Vikings?” cried the boy, pressing his horse into the foam so
eagerly, that the men, mistaking his intent, had to be represt again by
Hereward. “You are Vikings! Then come on shore, and welcome. You
shall be my friends. You shall be my brothers. I will answer to my
grandfather. I have longed to see Vikings. I long to be a Viking
myself.”
“By the hammer of Thor,” cried the old master, “and thou wouldst make a
bonny one, my lad.”
Hereward hesitated, delighted with the boy, but by no means sure of his
power to protect them.
But the boy rode back to his companions, who had by this time ridden
cautiously down to the sea, and talked and gesticulated eagerly.
Then the clerk rode down and talked with Hereward.
“Are you Christians?” shouted he, before he would adventure himself near
the ship.
“Christians we are, Sir Clerk, and dare do no harm to a man of God.”
The Clerk rode nearer; his handsome palfrey, furred cloak, rich gloves
and boots, moreover his air of command, showed that he was no common
man.
“I,” said he, “am the Abbot of St. Bertin of Sithiu, and tutor of yonder
prince. I can bring down, at a word, against you, the Châtelain of St.
Omer, with all his knights, besides knights and men-at-arms of my own.
But I am a man of peace, and not of war, and would have no blood shed if
I can help it.”
“Then make peace,” said Hereward. “Your lord may kill us if he will, or
have us for his guests if he will. If he does the first, we shall kill,
each of us, a few of his men before we die; if the latter, we shall
kill a few of his foes. If you be a man of God, you will counsel him
accordingly.”
“Alas! alas!” said the Abbot, with a shudder, “that, ever since Adam’s
fall, sinful man should talk of nothing but slaying and being slain; not
knowing that his soul is slain already by sin, and that a worse death
awaits him hereafter than that death of the body of which he makes so
light!”
“A very good sermon, my Lord Abbot, to listen to next Sunday morning:
but we are hungry and wet and desperate just now; and if you do not
settle this matter for us, our blood will be on your head,--and maybe
your own likewise.”
The Abbot rode out of the water faster than he had ridden in, and a
fresh consultation ensued, after which the boy, with a warning gesture
to his companions, turned and galloped away through the sand-hills.
“He is gone to his grandfather himself, I verily believe,” quoth
Hereward.
They waited for some two hours, unmolested; and, true to their policy
of seeming recklessness, shifted and dried themselves as well as
they could, ate what provisions were unspoilt by the salt water, and,
broaching the last barrel of ale, drank healths to each other and to the
Flemings on shore.
At last down rode, with the boy, a noble-looking man, and behind
him more knights and men-at-arms. He announced himself as Manasses,
Châtelain of St. Omer, and repeated the demand to surrender.
“There is no need for it,” said Hereward. “We are already that young
prince’s guests. He has said that we shall be his friends and brothers.
He has said that he will answer to his grandfather, the great Marquis,
whom I and mine shall be proud to serve. I claim the word of a
descendant of Charlemagne.”
“And you shall have it!” cried the boy. “Châtelain! Abbot! these men are
mine. They shall come with me, and lodge in St. Bertin.”
“Heaven forefend!” murmured the Abbot.
“They will be safe, at least, within your ramparts,” whispered the
Châtelain.
“And they shall tell me about the sea. Have I not told you how I long
for Vikings; how I will have Vikings of my own, and sail the seas with
them, like my Uncle Robert, and go to Spain and fight the Moors, and
to Constantinople and marry the Kaiser’s daughter? Come,” he cried to
Hereward, “come on shore, and he that touches you or your ship, touches
me!”
“Sir Châtelain and my Lord Abbot,” said Hereward, “you see that, Viking
though I be, I am no barbarous heathen, but a French-speaking gentleman,
like yourselves. It had been easy for me, had I not been a man of honor,
to have cast a rope, as my sailors would have had me do, over that young
boy’s fair head, and haled him on board, to answer for my life with
his own. But I loved him, and trusted him, as I would an angel out
of heaven; and I trust him still. To him, and him only, will I yield
myself, on condition that I and my men shall keep all our arms
and treasure, and enter his service, to fight his foes, and his
grandfather’s, wheresoever they will, by land or sea.”
“Fair sir,” said the Abbot, “pirate though you call yourself, you speak
so courtly and clerkly, that I, too, am inclined to trust you; and if my
young lord will have it so, into St. Bertin I will receive you, till our
lord, the Marquis, shall give orders about you and yours.”
So promises were given all round; and Hereward explained the matter to
the men, without whose advice (for they were all as free as himself) he
could not act.
“Needs must,” grunted they, as they packed up each his little valuables.
Then Hereward sheathed his sword, and leaping from the bow, came up to
the boy.
“Put your hands between his, fair sir,” said the Châtelain.
“That is not the manner of Vikings.”
And he took the boy’s right hand, and grasped it in the plain English
fashion.
“There is the hand of an honest man. Come down, men, and take this young
lord’s hand, and serve him in the wars as I will do.”
One, by one the men came down; and each took Arnulf’s hand, and shook it
till the lad’s face grew red. But none of them bowed, or made obeisance.
They looked the boy full in the face, and as they stepped back, stared
round upon the ring of armed men with a smile and something of a
swagger.
“These are they who bow to no man, and call no man master,” whispered
the Abbot.
And so they were: and so are their descendants of Scotland and
Northumbria, unto this very day.
The boy sprang from his horse, and walked among them and round them in
delight. He admired and handled their long-handled double axes; their
short sea-bows of horn and deer-sinew; their red Danish jerkins; their
blue sea-cloaks, fastened on the shoulder with rich brooches; and the
gold and silver bracelets on their wrists. He wondered at their long
shaggy beards, and still more at the blue patterns with which the
English among them, Hereward especially, were tattooed on throat and arm
and knee.
“Yes, you are Vikings,--just such as my Uncle Robert tells me of.”
Hereward knew well the exploits of Robert le Frison in Spain and Greece.
“I trust that your noble uncle,” he asked, “is well? He was one of us
poor sea-cocks, and sailed the swan’s path gallantly, till he became
a mighty prince. Here is a man here who was with your noble uncle in
Byzant.”
And he thrust forward the old master.
The boy’s delight knew no bounds. He should tell him all about that in
St. Bertin.
Then he rode back to the ship, and round and round her (for the tide
by that time had left her high and dry), and wondered at her long
snake-like lines, and carven stem and stern.
“Tell me about this ship. Let me go on board of her. I have never seen
a ship inland at Mons there; and even here there are only heavy ugly
busses, and little fishing-boats. No. You must be all hungry and tired.
We will go to St. Bertin at once, and you shall be feasted royally.
Hearken, villains!” shouted he to the peasants. “This ship belongs to
the fair sir here,--my guest and friend; and if any man dares to steal
from her a stave or a nail, I will have his thief’s hand cut off.”
“The ship, fair lord,” said Hereward, “is yours, not mine. You should
build twenty more after her pattern, and man them with such lads as
these, and then go down to
‘Miklagard and Spanialand,
That lie so far on the lee, O!’
as did your noble uncle before you.”
And so they marched inland, after the boy had dismounted one of his men,
and put Hereward on the horse.
“You gentlemen of the sea can ride as well as sail,” said the châtelain,
as he remarked with some surprise Hereward’s perfect seat and hand.
“We should soon learn to fly likewise,” laughed Hereward, “if there were
any booty to be picked up in the clouds there overhead”; and he rode on
by Arnulf’s side, as the lad questioned him about the sea, and nothing
else.
“Ah, my boy,” said Hereward at last, “look there, and let those be
Vikings who must.”
And he pointed to the rich pastures, broken by strips of corn-land and
snug farms, which stretched between the sea and the great forest of
Flanders.
“What do you mean?”
But Hereward was silent. It was so like his own native fens. For a
moment there came over him the longing for a home. To settle down in
such a fair fat land, and call good acres his own; and marry and beget
stalwart sons, to till the old estate when he could till no more.
Might not that be a better life--at least a happier one--than restless,
homeless, aimless adventure? And now, just as he had had a hope of
peace,--a hope of seeing his own land, his own folk, perhaps of making
peace with his mother and his king,--the very waves would not let him
rest, but sped him forth, a storm-tossed waif, to begin life anew,
fighting he cared not whom or why, in a strange land.
So he was silent and sad withal.
“What does he mean?” asked the boy of the Abbot.
“He seems a wise man: let him answer for himself.”
The boy asked once more.
“Lad! lad!” said Hereward, waking as from a dream. “If you be heir to
such a fair land as that, thank God for it, and pray to Him that you may
rule it justly, and keep it in peace, as they say your grandfather and
your father do; and leave glory and fame and the Vikings’ bloody trade
to those who have neither father nor mother, wife nor land, but live
like the wolf of the wood, from one meal to the next.”
“I thank you for those words, Sir Harold,” said the good Abbot, while
the boy went on abashed, and Hereward himself was startled at his own
saying, and rode silent till they crossed the drawbridge of St.
Bertin, and entered that ancient fortress, so strong that it was the
hiding-place in war time for all the treasures of the country, and so
sacred withal that no woman, dead or alive, was allowed to defile it by
her presence; so that the wife of Baldwin the Bold, ancestor of Arnulf,
wishing to lie by her husband, had to remove his corpse from St. Bertin
to the Abbey of Blandigni, where the Counts of Flanders lay in glory for
many a generation.
The pirates entered, not without gloomy distrust, the gates of that
consecrated fortress; while the monks in their turn were (and with some
reason) considerably frightened when they were asked to entertain as
guests forty Norse rovers. Loudly did the elder among them bewail
(in Latin, lest their guests should understand too much) the present
weakness of their monastery, where St. Bertin was left to defend himself
and his monks all alone against the wicked world outside. Far different
had been their case some hundred and seventy years before. Then St.
Valeri and St. Riquier of Ponthieu, transported thither from their own
resting-places in France for fear of the invading Northmen, had joined
their suffrages and merits to those of St. Bertin, with such success
that the abbey had never been defiled by the foot of the heathen. But,
alas! the saints, that is their bodies, after a while became homesick;
and St. Valeri appearing in a dream to Hugh Capet, bade him bring them
back to France in spite of Arnulf, Count of those parts, who wished much
to retain so valuable an addition to his household gods.
But in vain. Hugh Capet was a man who took few denials. With knights and
men-at-arms he came, and Count Arnulf had to send home the holy corpses
with all humility, and leave St. Bertin all alone.
Whereon St. Valeri appeared in a dream to Hugh Capet, and said unto
him, “Because thou hast zealously done what I commanded, thou and
thy successors shall reign in the kingdom of France to everlasting
generations.” [Footnote: “Histoire des Comtes de Flandre,” par E. le
Glay. E. gestis SS. Richarii et Walerici.]
However, there was no refusing the grandson and heir of Count Baldwin;
and the hearts of the monks were comforted by hearing that Hereward was
a good Christian, and that most of his crew had been at least baptized.
The Abbot therefore took courage, and admitted them into the hospice,
with solemn warnings as to the doom which they might expect if they took
the value of a horse-nail from the patrimony of the blessed saint. Was
he less powerful or less careful of his own honor than St. Lieven of
Holthem, who, not more than fifty years before, had struck stone-blind
four soldiers of the Emperor Henry’s, who had dared, after warning, to
plunder the altar? [Footnote: Ibid.] Let them remember, too, the fate of
their own forefathers, the heathens of the North, and the check which,
one hundred and seventy years before, they had received under those very
walls. They had exterminated the people of Walcheren; they had taken
prisoner Count Regnier; they had burnt Ghent, Bruges, and St. Omer
itself, close by; they had left naught between the Scheldt and the
Somme, save stark corpses and blackened ruins. What could withstand them
till they dared to lift audacious hands against the heavenly lord
who sleeps there in Sithiu? Then they poured down in vain over the
Heilig-Veld, innumerable as the locusts. Poor monks, strong in the
protection of the holy Bertin, sallied out and smote them hip and thigh,
singing their psalms the while. The ditches of the fortress were filled
with unbaptized corpses; the piles of vine-twigs which they lighted to
burn down the gates turned their flames into the Norsemen’s faces at the
bidding of St. Bertin; and they fled from that temporal fire to descend
into that which is eternal, while the gates of the pit were too narrow
for the multitude of their miscreant souls. [Footnote: This gallant feat
was performed in the A.D. 891.]
So the Norsemen heard, and feared; and only cast longing eyes at the
gold and tapestries of the altars, when they went in to mass.
For the good Abbot, gaining courage still further, had pointed out to
Hereward and his men that it had been surely by the merits and suffrages
of the blessed St. Bertin that they had escaped a watery grave.
Hereward and his men, for their part, were not inclined to deny the
theory. That they had miraculously escaped, from the accident of the
tide being high, they knew full well; and that St. Bertin should have
done them the service was probable enough. He, of course, was lord and
master in his own country, and very probably a few miles out to sea
likewise.
So Hereward assured the Abbot that he had no mind to eat St. Bertin’s
bread, or accept his favors, without paying honestly for them; and after
mass he took from his shoulders a handsome silk cloak (the only one he
had), with a great Scotch Cairngorm brooch, and bade them buckle it on
the shoulders of the great image of St. Bertin.
At which St. Bertin was so pleased (being, like many saints, male
and female, somewhat proud after their death of the finery which they
despised during life), that he appeared that night to a certain monk,
and told him that if Hereward would continue duly to honor him, the
blessed St. Bertin, and his monks at that place, he would, in his turn,
insure him victory in all his battles by land and sea.
After which Hereward stayed quietly in the abbey certain days; and young
Arnulf, in spite of all remonstrances from the Abbot, would never leave
his side till he had heard from him and from his men as much of their
adventures as they thought it prudent to relate.