HOW HEREWARD SAILED FOE ENGLAND ONCE AND FOR ALL.
So Hereward fought the Viscount of Pinkney, who had the usual luck which
befell those who crossed swords with him, and plotted meanwhile with
Gyda and the Countess Judith. Abbot Egelsin sent them news from King
Sweyn in Denmark; soon Judith and Tosti’s two sons went themselves to
Sweyn, and helped the plot and the fitting out of the armament. News
they had from England in plenty, by messengers from Queen Matilda to
the sister who was intriguing to dethrone her husband, and by private
messengers from Durham and from York.
Baldwin, the _débonnaire_ marquis, had not lived to see this fruit of
his long efforts to please everybody. He had gone to his rest the year
before; and now there ruled in Bruges his son, Baldwin the Good, “Count
Palatine,” as he styled himself, and his wife Richilda, the Lady of
Hainault.
They probably cared as little for the success of their sister Matilda as
they did for that of their sister Judith; and followed out--Baldwin at
least--the great marquis’s plan of making Flanders a retreat for the
fugitives of all the countries round.
At least, if (as seems) Sweyn’s fleet made the coast of Flanders its
rendezvous and base of operations against King William, Baldwin offered
no resistance.
So the messengers came, and the plots went on. Great was the delight
of Hereward and the ladies when they heard of the taking of Durham and
York; but bitter their surprise and rage when they heard that Gospatrick
and the Confederates had proclaimed Edgar Atheling king.
“Fools! they will ruin all!” cried Gyda. “Do they expect Swend Ulfsson,
who never moved a finger yet, unless he saw that it would pay him within
the hour, to spend blood and treasure in putting that puppet boy upon
the throne instead of himself?”
“Calm yourself, great Countess,” said Hereward, with a smile. “The man
who puts him on the throne will find it very easy to take him off again
when he needs.”
“Pish!” said Gyda. “He must put him on the throne first. And how will he
do that? Will the men of the Danelagh, much less the Northumbrians, ever
rally round an Atheling of Cerdic’s house? They are raising a Wessex
army in Northumbria; a southern army in the north. There is no real
loyalty there toward the Atheling, not even the tie of kin, as there
would be to Swend. The boy is a mere stalking-horse, behind which each
of these greedy chiefs expects to get back his own lands; and if they
can get them back by any other means, well and good. Mark my words, Sir
Hereward, that cunning Frenchman will treat with them one by one, and
betray them one by one, till there is none left.”
How far Gyda was right will be seen hereafter. But a less practised
diplomat than the great Countess might have speculated reasonably on
such an event.
At least, let this be said, that when historians have complained of
the treachery of King Swend Ulfsson and his Danes, they have forgotten
certain broad and simple facts.
Swend sailed for England to take a kingdom which he believed to be his
by right; which he had formerly demanded of William. When he arrived
there, he found himself a mere cat’s-paw for recovering that kingdom
for an incapable boy, whom he believed to have no right to the throne at
all.
Then came darker news. As Ivo had foreseen, and as Ivo had done his best
to bring about, William dashed on York, and drove out the Confederates
with terrible slaughter; profaned the churches, plundered the town.
Gospatrick and the earls retreated to Durham; the Atheling, more
cautious, to Scotland.
Then came a strange story, worthy of the grown children who, in those
old times, bore the hearts of boys with the ferocity and intellect of
men.
A great fog fell on the Frenchmen as they struggled over the Durham
moors. The doomed city was close beneath them; they heard Wear roaring
in his wooded gorge. But a darkness, as of Egypt, lay upon them:
“neither rose any from his place.”
Then the Frenchmen cried: “This darkness is from St. Cuthbert himself.
We have invaded his holy soil. Who has not heard how none who offend St.
Cuthbert ever went unpunished? how palsy, blindness, madness, fall on
those who dare to violate his sanctuary?”
And the French turned and fled from before the face of St. Cuthbert;
and William went down to Winchester angry and sad, and then went off
to Gloucestershire; and hunted--for, whatever befell, he still would
hunt--in the forest of Dean.
And still Swend and his Danes had not sailed; and Hereward walked to and
fro in his house, impatiently, and bided his time.
In July, Baldwin died. Arnoul, the boy, was Count of Flanders, and
Richilda, his sorceress-mother, ruled the land in his name. She began to
oppress the Flemings; not those of French Flanders, round St. Omer, but
those of Flemish Flanders, toward the north. They threatened to send for
Robert the Frison to right them.
Hereward was perplexed. He was Robert the Frison’s friend, and old
soldier. Richilda was Torfrida’s friend; so was, still more, the boy
Arnoul; which party should he take? Neither, if he could help it. And he
longed to be safe out of the land.
And at last his time came. Martin Lightfoot ran in, breathless, to tell
how the sails of a mighty fleet were visible from the Dunes.
“Here?” cried Hereward. “What are the fools doing down here, wandering
into the very jaws of the wolf? How will they land here? They were to
have gone straight to the Lincolnshire coast. God grant this mistake be
not the first of dozens!”
Hereward went into Torfrida’s bower.
“This is an evil business. The Danes are here, where they have no
business, instead of being off Scheldtmouth, as I entreated them. But go
we must, or be forever shamed. Now, true wife, are you ready? Dare you
leave home and kin and friends, once and for all, to go, you know not
whither, with one who may be a gory corpse by this day week?”
“I dare,” said she.
So they went down to Calais by night, with Torfrida’s mother, and all
their jewels, and all they had in the world. And their housecarles
went with them, forty men, tried and trained, who had vowed to follow
Hereward round the world. And there were two long ships ready, and
twenty good mariners in each. So when the Danes made the South Foreland
the next morning, they were aware of two gallant ships bearing down on
them, with a great white bear embroidered on their sails.
A proud man was Hereward that day, as he sailed into the midst of the
Danish fleet, and up to the royal ships, and shouted: “I am Hereward
the Berserker, and I come to take service under my rightful lord, Sweyn,
king of England.”
“Come on board, then; we know you well, and right glad we are to have
Hereward with us.”
And Hereward laid his ship’s bow upon the quarter of the royal ship (to
lay alongside was impossible, for fear of breaking oars), and came on
board.
“And thou art Hereward?” asked a tall and noble warrior.
“I am. And thou art Swend Ulfsson, the king?”
“I am Earl Osbiorn, his brother.”
“Then, where is the king?”
“He is in Denmark, and I command his fleet; and with me are Canute and
Harold, Sweyn’s sons, and earls and bishops enough for all England.”
This was spoken in a somewhat haughty tone, in answer to the look of
surprise and disappointment which Hereward had, unawares, allowed to
pass over his face.
“Thou art better than none,” said Hereward. “Now, hearken, Osbiorn the
Earl. Had Swend been here, I would have put my hand between his, and
said in my own name, and that of all the men in Kesteven and the fens,
Swend’s men we are, to live and die! But now, as it is, I say, for me
and them, thy men we are, to live and die, as long as thou art true to
us.”
“True to you I will be,” said Osbiorn.
“Be it so,” said Hereward. “True we shall be, whatever betide. Now,
whither goes Earl Osbiorn, and all his great meinie?”
“We purpose to try Dover.”
“You will not take it. The Frenchman has strengthened it with one of his
accursed keeps, and without battering-engines you may sit before it a
month.”
“What if I asked you to go in thither yourself, and try the mettle and
the luck which, they say, never failed Hereward yet?”
“I should say that it was a child’s trick to throw away against a
paltry stone wall the life of a man who was ready to raise for you in
Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire, five times as many men as you will lose
in taking Dover.”
“Hereward is right,” said more than one Earl. “We shall need him in his
own country.”
“If you are wise, to that country you yourselves will go. It is ready
to receive you. This is ready to oppose you. You are attacking the
Frenchman at his strongest point instead of his weakest. Did I not send
again and again, entreating you to cross from Scheldtmouth to the Wash,
and send me word that I might come and raise the Fen-men for you, and
then we would all go north together?”
“I have heard, ere now,” said Earl Osbiorn, haughtily, “that Hereward,
though he be a valiant Viking, is more fond of giving advice than of
taking it.”
Hereward was about to answer very fiercely. If he had, no one would
have thought any harm, in those plain-spoken times. But he was wise; and
restrained himself, remembering that Torfrida was there, all but alone,
in the midst of a fleet of savage men; and that beside, he had a great
deed to do, and must do it as he could. So he answered,--
“Osbiorn the Earl has not, it seems, heard this of Hereward: that
because he is accustomed to command, he is also accustomed to obey. What
thou wilt do, do, and bid me do. He that quarrels with his captain cuts
his own throat and his fellows’ too.”
“Wisely spoken!” said the earls; and Hereward went back to his ship.
“Torfrida,” said he, bitterly, “the game is lost before it is begun.”
“God forbid, my beloved! What words are these?”
“Swend--fool that he is with his over-caution,--always the same!--has
let the prize slip from between his fingers. He has sent Osbiorn instead
of himself.”
“But why is that so terrible a mistake?”
“We do not want a fleet of Vikings in England, to plunder the French
and English alike. We want a king, a king, a king!” and Hereward stamped
with rage. “And instead of a king, we have this Osbiorn,--all men know
him, greedy and false and weak-headed. Here he is going to be beaten off
at Dover; and then, I suppose, at the next port; and so forth, till the
whole season is wasted, and the ships and men lost by driblets. Pray for
us to God and his saints, Torfrida, you who are nearer to Heaven than I;
for we never needed it more.”
And Osbiorn went in; tried to take Dover; and was beaten off with heavy
loss.
Then the earls bade him take Hereward’s advice. But he would not.
So he went round the Foreland, and tried Sandwich,--as if, landing
there, he would have been safe in marching on London, in the teeth of
the _élite_ of Normandy.
But he was beaten off there, with more loss. Then, too late, he took
Hereward’s advice,--or, rather, half of it,--and sailed north; but only
to commit more follies.
He dared not enter the Thames. He would not go on to the Wash; but he
went into the Orwell, and attacked Ipswich, plundering right and left,
instead of proclaiming King Sweyn, and calling the Danish folk around
him. The Danish folk of Suffolk rose, and, like valiant men, beat him
off; while Hereward lay outside the river mouth, his soul within him
black with disappointment, rage, and shame. He would not go in. He would
not fight against his own countrymen. He would not help to turn the
whole plan into a marauding raid. And he told Earl Osbiorn so, so
fiercely, that his life would have been in danger, had not the force of
his arm been as much feared as the force of his name was needed.
At last they came to Yarmouth. Osbiorn would needs land there, and try
Norwich.
Hereward was nigh desperate: but he hit upon a plan. Let Osbiorn do so,
if he would. He himself would sail round to the Wash, raise the Fen-men,
and march eastward at their head through Norfolk to meet him. Osbiorn
himself could not refuse so rational a proposal. All the earls and
bishops approved loudly; and away Hereward went to the Wash, his heart
well-nigh broken, foreseeing nothing but evil.