HOW THEY FOUGHT AT ALDRETH.
When William heard that the Danes were gone, he marched on Ely, as on an
easy prey.
Ivo Taillebois came with him, hungry after those Spalding lands, the
rents whereof Hereward had been taking for his men for now twelve
months. William de Warrenne was there, vowed to revenge the death of Sir
Frederic, his brother. Ralph Guader was there, flushed with his success
at Norwich. And with them all the Frenchmen of the east, who had been
either expelled from their lands, or were in fear of expulsion.
With them, too, was a great army of mercenaries, ruffians from all
France and Flanders, hired to fight for a certain term, on the chance of
plunder or of fiefs in land. Their brains were all aflame with the tales
of inestimable riches hidden in Ely. There were there the jewels of
all the monasteries round; there were the treasures of all the fugitive
English nobles; there were there--what was there not? And they grumbled,
when William halted them and hutted them at Cambridge, and began to feel
cautiously the strength of the place,--which must be strong, or Hereward
and the English would not have made it their camp of refuge.
Perhaps he rode up to Madingley windmill, and saw fifteen miles away,
clear against the sky, the long line of what seemed naught but a low
upland park, with the minster tower among the trees; and between him and
them, a rich champaign of grass, over which it was easy enough to march
all the armies of Europe; and thought Ely an easy place to take. But men
told him that between him and those trees lay a black abyss of mud and
peat and reeds, Haddenham fen and Smithy fen, with the deep sullen West
water or “Ald-reche” of the Ouse winding through them. The old Roman
road was sunk and gone long since under the bog, whether by English
neglect, or whether (as some think) by actual and bodily sinking of the
whole land. The narrowest space between dry land and dry land was a full
half-mile; and how to cross that half-mile, no man knew.
What were the approaches on the west? There were none. Beyond Earith,
where now run the great washes of the Bedford Level, was a howling
wilderness of meres, seas, reed-ronds, and floating alder-beds, through
which only the fen-men wandered, with leaping-pole and log canoe.
What in the east? The dry land neared the island on that side. And it
may be that William rowed round by Burwell to Fordham and Soham, and
thought of attempting the island by way of Barraway, and saw beneath him
a labyrinth of islands, meres, fens, with the Ouse, now increased by
the volume of the Cam, lying deep and broad between Barraway and
Thetford-in-the-Isle; and saw, too, that a disaster in that labyrinth
might be a destruction.
So he determined on the near and straight path, through Long Stratton
and Willingham, down the old bridle-way from Willingham ploughed
field,--every village there, and in the isle likewise, had and has still
its “field,” or ancient clearing of ploughed land,--and then to try that
terrible half-mile, with the courage and wit of a general to whom human
lives were as those of the gnats under the hedge.
So all his host camped themselves in Willingham field, by the old
earthwork which men now call Belsar’s Hills; and down the bridle-way
poured countless men, bearing timber and fagots cut from all the hills,
that they might bridge the black half-mile.
They made a narrow, firm path through the reeds, and down to the brink
of the Ouse, if brink it could be called, where the water, rising and
falling a foot or two each tide, covered the floating peat for many
yards before it sunk into a brown depth of bottomless slime. They would
make a bottom for themselves by driving piles.
The piles would not hold; and they began to make a floating bridge with
long beams, says Leofric, and blown-up cattle-hides to float them.
Soon they made a floating sow, and thrust it on before them as they
worked across the stream; for they were getting under shot from the
island.
Meanwhile the besieged had not been idle. They had thrown up, says
Leofric, a turf rampart on the island shore, and _antemuralia et
propugnacula,_--doubtless overhanging “hoardings,” or scaffolds, through
the floor of which they could shower down missiles. And so they awaited
the attack, contenting themselves with gliding in and out of the reeds
in their canoes, and annoying the builders with arrows and cross-bow
bolts.
At last the bridge was finished, and the sow safe across the West water,
and thrust in, as far as it would float, among the reeds on the high
tide. They in the fort could touch it with a pole.
The English would have destroyed it if they could. But Hereward bade
them leave it alone. He had watched all their work, and made up his mind
to the event.
“The rats have set a trap for themselves,” he said to his men, “and we
shall be fools to break it up till the rats are safe inside.”
So there the huge sow lay, black and silent, showing nothing to the
enemy but a side of strong plank, covered with hide to prevent its being
burned. It lay there for three hours, and Hereward let it lie.
He had never been so cheerful, so confident. “Play the man this day,
every one of you, and ere nightfall you will have taught the Norman once
more the lesson of York. He seems to have forgotten that. It is me to
remind him of it.”
And he looked to his bow and to his arrows, and prepared to play the man
himself,--as was the fashion in those old days, when a general proved
his worth by hitting harder and more surely than any of his men.
At last the army was in motion, and Willingham field opposite was like a
crawling ants’ nest. Brigade after brigade moved down to the reed beds,
and the assault began.
And now advanced along the causeway and along the bridge a dark column
of men, surmounted by glittering steel. Knights in complete mail,
footmen in leather coats and quilted jerkins; at first orderly enough,
each under the banner of his lord; but more and more mingled and
crowded as they hurried forward, each eager for his selfish share of
the inestimable treasures of Ely. They pushed along the bridge. The mass
became more and more crowded; men stumbled over each other, and fell
off into the mire and the water, calling vainly for help, while their
comrades hurried on unheeding, in the mad thirst for spoil.
On they came in thousands; and fresh thousands streamed out of the
fields, as if the whole army intended to pour itself into the isle at
once.
“They are numberless,” said Torfrida, in a serious and astonished voice,
as she stood by Hereward’s side.
“Would they were!” said Hereward. “Let them come on, thick and
threefold. The more their numbers the fatter will the fish below be
before to-morrow morning. Look there, already!”
And already the bridge was swaying, and sinking beneath their weight.
The men in places were ankle deep in water. They rushed on all the more
eagerly, and filled the sow, and swarmed up to its roof.
Then, what with its own weight, what with the weight of the laden
bridge,--which dragged upon it from behind,--the huge sow began to tilt
backwards, and slide down the slimy bank.
The men on the top tried vainly to keep their footing, to hurl grapnels
into the rampart, to shoot off their quarrels and arrows.
“You must be quick, Frenchmen,” shouted Hereward in derision, “if you
mean to come on board here.”
The Normans knew that well; and as Hereward spoke two panels in the
front of the sow creaked on their hinges, and dropped landward, forming
two draw-bridges, over which reeled to the attack a close body of
knights, mingled with soldiers bearing scaling ladders.
They recoiled. Between the ends of the draw-bridges and the foot of the
rampart was some two fathoms’ depth of black ooze. The catastrophe which
Hereward had foreseen was come, and a shout of derision arose from the
unseen defenders above.
“Come on,--leap it like men! Send back for your horses, knights, and
ride them at it like bold huntsmen!”
The front rank could not but rush on: for the pressure behind forced
them forward, whether they would or not. In a moment they were wallowing
waist deep, trampled on, and disappearing under their struggling
comrades, who disappeared in their turn.
“Look, Torfrida! If they plant their scaling ladders, it will be on a
foundation of their comrades’ corpses.”
Torfrida gave one glance through the openings of the hoarding, upon
the writhing mass below, and turned away in horror. The men were not
so merciful. Down between the hoarding-beams rained stones, javelins,
arrows, increasing the agony and death. The scaling ladders would not
stand in the mire. If they had stood a moment, the struggles of the
dying would have thrown them down; and still fresh victims pressed on
from behind, shouting “Dex Aie! On to the gold of Ely!” And still the
sow, under the weight, slipped further and further back into the stream,
and the foul gulf widened between besiegers and besieged.
At last one scaling ladder was planted upon the bodies of the dead, and
hooked firmly on the gunwale of the hoarding. Ere it could be hurled off
again by the English, it was so crowded with men that even Hereward’s
strength was insufficient to lift it off. He stood at the top, ready to
hew down the first comer; and he hewed him down.
But the Normans were not to be daunted. Man after man dropped dead from
the ladder top,--man after man took his place; sometimes two at a time;
sometimes scrambling over each other’s backs.
The English, even in the insolence of victory, cheered them with honest
admiration. “You are fellows worth fighting, you French!”
“So we are,” shouted a knight, the first and last who crossed that
parapet; for, thrusting Hereward back with a blow of his sword-hilt, he
staggered past him over the hoarding, and fell on his knees.
A dozen men were upon him; but he was up again and shouting,--
“To me, men-at-arms! A Dade! a Dade!” But no man answered.
“Yield!” quoth Hereward.
Sir Dade answered by a blow on Hereward’s helmet, which felled the chief
to his knees, and broke the sword into twenty splinters.
“Well hit,” said Hereward, as he rose. “Don’t touch him, men! this is
my quarrel now. Yield, sir! you have done enough for your honor. It is
madness to throw away your life.”
The knight looked round on the fierce ring of faces, in the midst of
which he stood alone.
“To none but Hereward.”
“Hereward am I.”
“Ah,” said the knight, “had I but hit a little harder!”
“You would have broke your sword into more splinters. My armor is
enchanted. So yield like a reasonable and valiant man.”
“What care I?” said the knight, stepping on to the earthwork, and
sitting down quietly. “I vowed to St. Mary and King William that into
Ely I would get this day; and in Ely I am; so I have done my work.”
“And now you shall taste--as such a gallant knight deserves--the
hospitality of Ely.”
It was Torfrida who spoke.
“My husband’s prisoners are mine; and I, when I find them such
_prudhommes_ as you are, have no lighter chains for them than that which
a lady’s bower can afford.”
Sir Dade was going to make an equally courteous answer, when over and
above the shouts and curses of the combatants rose a yell so keen, so
dreadful, as made all hurry forward to the rampart.
That which Hereward had foreseen was come at last. The bridge, strained
more and more by its living burden, and by the falling tide, had
parted,--not at the Ely end, where the sliding of the sow took off the
pressure,--but at the end nearest the camp. One sideway roll it gave,
and then, turning over, engulfed in that foul stream the flower of
Norman chivalry; leaving a line--a full quarter of a mile in length--of
wretches drowning in the dark water, or, more hideous still, in the
bottomless slime of peat and mud.
Thousands are said to have perished. Their armor and weapons were found
at times, by delvers and dikers, for centuries after; are found at times
unto this day, beneath the rich drained cornfields which now fill up
that black half-mile, or in the bed of the narrow brook to which the
Westwater, robbed of its streams by the Bedford Level, has dwindled down
at last.
William, they say, struck his tents and departed forthwith, “groaning
from deep grief of heart;” and so ended the first battle of Aldreth.