HOW HEREWARD GOT THE BEST OF HIS SOUL’S PRICE.
In those days a messenger came riding post to Bourne. The Countess
Judith wished to visit the tomb of her late husband, Earl Waltheof; and
asked hospitality on her road of Hereward and Alftruda.
Of course she would come with a great train, and the trouble and expense
would be great. But the hospitality of those days, when money was
scarce, and wine scarcer still, was unbounded, and a matter of course;
and Alftruda was overjoyed. No doubt, Judith was the most unpopular
person in England at that moment; called by all a traitress and a fiend.
But she was an old acquaintance of Alftruda’s; she was the king’s niece;
she was immensely rich, not only in manors of her own, but in manors,
as Domesday-book testifies, about Lincolnshire and the counties round,
which had belonged to her murdered husband,--which she had too probably
received as the price of her treason. So Alftruda looked to her visit as
to an honor which would enable her to hold her head high among the proud
Norman dames, who despised her as the wife of an Englishman.
Hereward looked on the visit in a different light. He called Judith ugly
names, not undeserved; and vowed that if she entered his house by the
front door he would go out at the back. “Torfrida prophesied,” he said,
“that she would betray her husband, and she had done it.”
“Torfrida prophesied? Did she prophesy that I should betray you
likewise?” asked Alftruda, in a tone of bitter scorn.
“No, you handsome fiend: will you do it?”
“Yes; I am a handsome fiend, am I not?” and she bridled up her
magnificent beauty, and stood over him as a snake stands over a mouse.
“Yes; you are handsome,--beautiful: I adore you.”
“And yet you will not do what I wish?”
“What you wish? What would I not do for you? what have I not done for
you?”
“Then receive Judith. And now, go hunting, and bring me in game. I
want deer, roe, fowls; anything and everything from the greatest to the
smallest. Go and hunt.”
And Hereward trembled, and went.
There are flowers whose scent is so luscious that silly children will
plunge their heads among them, drinking in their odor, to the exclusion
of all fresh air. On a sudden sometimes comes a revulsion of the nerves.
The sweet odor changes in a moment to a horrible one; and the child
cannot bear for years after the scent which has once disgusted it by
over-sweetness.
And so had it happened to Hereward. He did not love Alftruda now: he
loathed, hated, dreaded her. And yet he could not take his eyes for a
moment off her beauty. He watched every movement of her hand, to press
it, obey it. He would have preferred instead of hunting, simply to sit
and watch her go about the house at her work. He was spell-bound to a
thing which he regarded with horror.
But he was told to go and hunt; and he went, with all his men, and sent
home large supplies for the larder. And as he hunted, the free, fresh
air of the forest comforted him, the free forest life came back to him,
and he longed to be an outlaw once more, and hunt on forever. He would
not go back yet, at least to face that Judith. So he sent back the
greater part of his men with a story. He was ill; he was laid up at a
farm-house far away in the forest, and begged the countess to excuse his
absence. He had sent fresh supplies of game, and a goodly company of his
men, knights and housecarles, who would escort her royally to Crowland.
Judith cared little for his absence; he was but an English barbarian.
Alftruda was half glad to have him out of the way, lest his now sullen
and uncertain temper should break out; and bowed herself to the earth
before Judith, who patronized her to her heart’s content, and offered
her slyly insolent condolences on being married to a barbarian. She
herself could sympathize,--who more?
Alftruda might have answered with scorn that she was an Adeliza, and of
better English blood than Judith’s Norman blood; but she had her ends to
gain, and gained them.
For Judith was pleased to be so delighted with her that she kissed her
lovingly, and said with much emotion that she required a friend who
would support her through her coming trial; and who better than one who
herself had suffered so much? Would she accompany her to Crowland?
Alftruda was overjoyed, and away they went.
And to Crowland they came; and to the tomb in the minster, whereof men
said already that the sacred corpse within worked miracles of healing.
And Judith, habited in widow’s weeds, approached the tomb, and laid on
it, as a peace-offering to the manes of the dead, a splendid pall of
silk and gold.
A fierce blast came howling off the fen, screeched through the minster
towers, swept along the dark aisles; and then, so say the chroniclers,
caught up the pall from off the tomb, and hurled it far away into a
corner.
“A miracle!” cried all the monks at once; and honestly enough, like true
Englishmen as they were.
“The Holy heart refuses the gift, Countess,” said old Ulfketyl in a
voice of awe.
Judith covered her face with her hands, and turned away trembling, and
walked out, while all looked upon her as a thing accursed.
Of her subsequent life, her folly, her wantonness, her disgrace, her
poverty, her wanderings, her wretched death, let others tell.
But these Normans believed that the curse of Heaven was upon her from
that day. And the best of them believed likewise that Waltheof’s murder
was the reason that William, her uncle, prospered no more in life.
“Ah, saucy sir,” said Alftruda to Ulfketyl, as she went out, “there is
one waiting at Peterborough now who will teach thee manners,--Ingulf of
Fontenelle, Abbot, in thy room.”
“Does Hereward know that?” asked Ulfketyl, looking keenly at her.
“What is that to thee?” said she, fiercely, and flung out of the
minster. But Hereward did not know. There were many things abroad of
which she told him nothing.
They went back and were landed at Deeping town, and making their way
along the King Street, or old Roman road, to Bourne. Thereon a man met
them, running. They had best stay where they were. The Frenchmen were
out, and there was fighting up in Bourne.
Alftruda’s knights wanted to push on, to see after the Bourne folk;
Judith’s knights wanted to push on to help the French; and the two
parties were ready to fight each other. There was a great tumult. The
ladies had much ado to still it.
Alftruda said that it might be but a countryman’s rumor; that, at least,
it was shame to quarrel with their guests. At last it was agreed that
two knights should gallop on into Bourne, and bring back news.
But those knights never came back. So the whole body moved on Bourne,
and there they found out the news for themselves.
Hereward had gone home as soon as they had departed, and sat down to eat
and drink. His manner was sad and strange. He drank much at the midday
meal, and then lay down to sleep, setting guards as usual.
After a while he leapt up with a shriek and a shudder.
They ran to him, asking whether he was ill.
“Ill? No. Yes. Ill at heart. I have had a dream,--an ugly dream. I
thought that all the men I ever slew on earth came to me with their
wounds all gaping, and cried at me, ‘Our luck then, thy luck now.’
Chaplain! is there not a verse somewhere,--Uncle Brand said it to me on
his deathbed,--‘Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be
shed’?”
“Surely the master is fey,” whispered Gwenoch in fear to the chaplain.
“Answer him out of Scripture.”
“Text? None such that I know of,” quoth Priest Ailward, a graceless
fellow who had taken Leofric’s place. “If that were the law, it would be
but few honest men that would die in their beds. Let us drink, and drive
girls’ fancies out of our heads.”
So they drank again; and Hereward fell asleep once more.
“It is thy turn to watch, Priest,” said Gwenoch to Ailward. “So keep the
door well, for I am worn out with hunting,” and so fell asleep.
Ailward shuffled into his harness, and went to the door. The wine was
heady; the sun was hot. In a few minutes he was asleep likewise.
Hereward slept, who can tell how long? But at last there was a bustle, a
heavy fall; and waking with a start, he sprang up. He saw Ailward lying
dead across the gate, and above him a crowd of fierce faces, some of
which he knew too well. He saw Ivo Taillebois; he saw Oger; he saw his
fellow-Breton, Sir Raoul de Dol; he saw Sir Ascelin; he saw Sir Aswa,
Thorold’s man; he saw Sir Hugh of Evermue, his own son-in-law; and with
them he saw, or seemed to see, the Ogre of Cornwall, and O’Brodar of
Ivark, and Dirk Hammerhand of Walcheren, and many another old foe long
underground; and in his ear rang the text,--“Whoso sheddeth man’s blood,
by man shall his blood be shed.” And Hereward knew that his end was
come.
There was no time to put on mail or helmet. He saw the old sword and
shield hang on a perch, and tore them down. As he girded the sword on
Winter sprang to his side.
“I have three lances,--two for me and one for you, and we can hold the
door against twenty.”
“Till they fire the house over our heads. Shall Hereward die like a wolf
in a cave? Forward, all Hereward’s men!”
And he rushed out upon his fate. No man followed him, save Winter. The
rest, disperst, unarmed, were running hither and thither helplessly.
“Brothers in arms, and brothers in Valhalla!” shouted Winter as he
rushed after him.
A knight was running to and fro in the Court, shouting Hereward’s name.
“Where is the villain? Wake! We have caught thee asleep at last.”
“I am out,” quoth Hereward, as the man almost stumbled against him; “and
this is in.”
And through shield, hauberk, and body, as says Gaima, went Hereward’s
javelin, while all drew back, confounded for the moment at that mighty
stroke.
“Felons!” shouted Hereward, “your king has given me his truce; and do
you dare break my house, and kill my folk? Is that your Norman law? And
is this your Norman honor?--To take a man unawares over his meat? Come
on, traitors all, and get what you can of a naked man; [Footnote: i. e.
without armor.] you will buy it dear--Guard my back, Winter!”
And he ran right at the press of knights; and the fight began.
“He gored them like a wood-wild boar,
As long as that lance might endure,”
says Gaimar.
“And when that lance did break in hand,
Full fell enough he smote with brand.”
And as he hewed on silently, with grinding teeth and hard, glittering
eyes, of whom did he think? Of Alftruda?
Not so. But of that pale ghost, with great black hollow eyes, who sat
in Crowland, with thin bare feet, and sackcloth on her tender limbs,
watching, praying, longing, loving, uncomplaining. That ghost had been
for many a month the background of all his thoughts and dreams. It
was so clear before his mind’s eye now, that, unawares to himself, he
shouted “Torfrida!” as he struck, and struck the harder at the sound of
his old battle-cry.
And now he is all wounded and be-bled; and Winter, who has fought back
to back with him, has fallen on his face; and Hereward stands alone,
turning from side to side, as he sweeps his sword right and left till
the forest rings with the blows, but staggering as he turns. Within a
ring of eleven corpses he stands. Who will go in and make the twelfth?
A knight rushes in, to fall headlong down, cloven through the helm: but
Hereward’s blade snaps short, and he hurls it away as his foes rush in
with a shout of joy. He tears his shield from his left arm, and with it,
says Gaimar, brains two more.
But the end is come. Taillebois and Evermue are behind him now; four
lances are through his back, and bear him down to his knees.
“Cut off his head, Breton!” shouted Ivo. Raoul de Dol rushed forward,
sword in hand. At that cry Hereward lifted up his dying head. One stroke
more ere it was all done forever.
And with a shout of “Torfrida!” which made the Bruneswald ring, he
hurled the shield full in the Breton’s face, and fell forward dead.
The knights drew their lances from that terrible corpse slowly and with
caution, as men who have felled a bear, yet dare not step within reach
of the seemingly lifeless paw.
“The dog died hard,” said Ivo. “Lucky for us that Sir Ascelin had news
of his knights being gone to Crowland. If he had had them to back him,
we had not done this deed to-day.”
“I will make sure,” said Ascelin, as he struck off the once fair and
golden head.
“Ho, Breton,” cried Ivo, “the villain is dead. Get up, man, and see for
yourself. What ails him?”
But when they lifted up Raoul de Dol his brains were running down his
face; and all men stood astonished at that last mighty stroke.
“That blow,” said Ascelin, “will be sung hereafter by minstrel and
maiden as the last blow of the last Englishman. Knights, we have slain
a better knight than ourselves. If there had been three more such men in
this realm, they would have driven us and King William back again into
the sea.”
So said Ascelin; those words of his, too, were sung by many a jongleur,
Norman as well as English, in the times that were to come.
“Likely enough,” said Ivo; “but that is the more reason why we should
set that head of his up over the hall-door, as a warning to these
English churls that their last man is dead, and their last stake thrown
and lost.”
So perished “the last of the English.”
It was the third day. The Normans were drinking in the hall of Bourne,
casting lots among themselves who should espouse the fair Alftruda, who
sat weeping within over the headless corpse; when in the afternoon a
servant came in, and told them how a barge full of monks had come to the
shore, and that they seemed to be monks from Crowland. Ivo Taillebois
bade drive them back again into the barge with whips. But Hugh of
Evermue spoke up.
“I am lord and master in Bourne this day, and if Ivo have a quarrel
against St. Guthlac, I have none. This Ingulf of Fontenelle, the new
abbot who has come thither since old Ulfketyl was sent to prison, is
a loyal man, and a friend of King William’s, and my friend he shall be
till he behaves himself as my foe. Let them come up in peace.”
Taillebois growled and cursed: but the monks came up, and into the hall;
and at their head Ingulf himself, to receive whom all men rose, save
Taillebois.
“I come,” said Ingulf, in most courtly French, “noble knights, to ask
a boon and in the name of the Most Merciful, on behalf of a noble and
unhappy lady. Let it be enough to have avenged yourself on the living.
Gentlemen and Christians war not against the dead.”
“No, no, Master Abbot!” shouted Taillebois; “Waltheof is enough to keep
Crowland in miracles for the present. You shall not make a martyr of
another Saxon churl. He wants the barbarian’s body, knights, and you
will be fools if you let him have it.”
“Churl? barbarian?” said a haughty voice; and a nun stepped forward who
had stood just behind Ingulf. She was clothed entirely in black. Her
bare feet were bleeding from the stones; her hand, as she lifted it, was
as thin as a skeleton’s.
She threw back her veil, and showed to the knights what had been once
the famous beauty of Torfrida.
But the beauty was long past away. Her hair was white as snow; her
cheeks were fallen in. Her hawk-like features were all sharp and hard.
Only in their hollow sockets burned still the great black eyes, so
fiercely that all men turned uneasily from her gaze.
“Churl? barbarian?” she said, slowly and quietly, but with an intensity
which was more terrible than rage. “Who gives such names to one who was
as much better born and better bred than those who now sit here, as he
was braver and more terrible than they? The base wood-cutter’s son? The
upstart who would have been honored had he taken service as yon dead
man’s groom?”
“Talk to me so, and my stirrup leathers shall make acquaintance with
your sides,” said Taillebois.
“Keep them for your wife. Churl? Barbarian? There is not a man within
this hall who is not a barbarian compared with him. Which of you touched
the harp like him? Which of you, like him, could move all hearts with
song? Which of you knows all tongues from Lapland to Provence? Which
of you has been the joy of ladies’ bowers, the counsellor of earls and
heroes, the rival of a mighty king? Which of you will compare yourself
with him,--whom you dared not even strike, you and your robber crew,
fairly in front, but, skulked round him till he fell pecked to death
by you, as Lapland Skratlings peck to death the bear. Ten years ago
he swept this hall of such as you, and hung their heads upon yon gable
outside; and were he alive but one five minutes again, this hall would
be right cleanly swept again! Give me his body,--or bear forever the
name of cowards, and Torfrida’s curse.”
And she fixed her terrible eyes first on one, and then on another,
calling them by name.
“Ivo Taillebois,--basest of all--”
“Take the witch’s accursed eyes off me!” and he covered his face with
his hands. “I shall be overlooked,--planet struck. Hew the witch down!
Take her away!”
“Hugh of Evermue,--the dead man’s daughter is yours, and the dead man’s
lands. Are not these remembrances enough of him? Are you so fond of his
memory that you need his corpse likewise?”
“Give it her! Give it her!” said he, hanging down his head like a rated
cur.
“Ascelin of Lincoln, once Ascelin of Ghent,--there was a time when
you would have done--what would you not?--for one glance of Torfrida’s
eyes.--Stay. Do not deceive yourself, fair sir, Torfrida means to ask no
favor of you, or of living man. But she commands you. Do the thing she
bids, or with one glance of her eye she sends you childless to your
grave.”
“Madam! Lady Torfrida! What is there I would not do for you? What have I
done now, save avenge your great wrong?”
Torfrida made no answer, but fixed steadily on him eyes which widened
every moment.
“But, madam,”--and he turned shrinking from the fancied spell,--“what
would you have? The--the corpse? It is in the keeping of--of another
lady.”
“So?” said Torfrida, quietly. “Leave her to me”; and she swept past them
all, and flung open the bower door at their backs, discovering Alftruda
sitting by the dead.
The ruffians were so utterly appalled, not only by the false powers of
magic, but by veritable powers of majesty and eloquence, that they let
her do what she would.
“Out!” cried she, using a short and terrible epithet. “Out, siren, with
fairy’s face and tail of fiend, and leave the husband with his wife!”
Alftruda looked up, shrieked; and then, with the sudden passion of a
weak nature, drew a little knife, and sprang up.
Ivo made a coarse jest. The Abbot sprang in: “For the sake of all holy
things, let there be no more murder here!”
Torfrida smiled, and fixed her snake’s eye upon her wretched rival.
“Out! woman, and choose thee a new husband among these French gallants,
ere I blast thee from head to foot with the leprosy of Naaman the
Syrian.”
Alftruda shuddered, and fled shrieking into an inner room.
“Now, knights, give me--that which hangs outside.”
Ascelin hurried out, glad to escape. In a minute he returned.
The head was already taken down. A tall lay brother, the moment he
had seen it, had climbed the gable, snatched it away, and now sat in a
corner of the yard, holding it on his knees, talking to it, chiding it,
as if it had been alive. When men had offered to take it, he had drawn a
battle-axe from under his frock, and threatened to brain all comers. And
the monks had warned off Ascelin, saying that the man was mad, and had
Berserk fits of superhuman strength and rage.
“He will give it me!” said Torfrida, and went out.
“Look at that gable, foolish head,” said the madman. “Ten years agone,
you and I took down from thence another head. O foolish head, to get
yourself at last up into that same place! Why would you not be ruled by
her, you foolish golden head?”
“Martin!” said Torfrida.
“Take it and comb it, mistress, as you used to do. Comb out the golden
locks again, fit to shine across the battle-field. She has let them get
all tangled into elf-knots, that lazy slut within.”
Torfrida took it from his hands, dry-eyed, and went in.
Then the monks silently took up the bier, and all went forth, and down
the hill toward the fen. They laid the corpse within the barge, and
slowly rowed away.
And on by Porsad and by Asendyke,
By winding reaches on, and shining meres
Between gray reed-ronds and green alder-beds,
A dirge of monks and wail of women rose
In vain to Heaven for the last Englishman;
Then died far off within the boundless mist,
And left the Norman master of the land.
So Torfrida took the corpse home to Crowland, and buried it in the
choir, near the blessed martyr St. Waltheof; after which she did not
die, but lived on many years, [Footnote: If Ingulf can be trusted,
Torfrida died about A.D. 1085.] spending all day in nursing and feeding
the Countess Godiva, and lying all night on Hereward’s tomb, and praying
that he might find grace and mercy in that day.
And at last Godiva died; and they took her away and buried her with
great pomp in her own minster church of Coventry.
And after that Torfrida died likewise; because she had nothing left for
which to live. And they laid her in Hereward’s grave, and their dust is
mingled to this day.
And Leofric the priest lived on to a good old age, and above all things
he remembered the deeds and the sins of his master, and wrote them in a
book, and this is what remains thereof.
But when Martin Lightfoot died, no man has said; for no man in those
days took account of such poor churls and running serving-men.
And Hereward’s comrades were all scattered abroad, some maimed, some
blinded, some with tongues cut out, to beg by the wayside, or crawl into
convents, and then die; while their sisters and daughters, ladies born
and bred, were the slaves of grooms and scullions from beyond the sea.
And so, as sang Thorkel Skallason,--
“Cold heart and bloody hand
Now rule English land.” [Footnote: Laing’s Heimskringla.]
And after that things waxed even worse and worse, for sixty years
and more; all through the reigns of the two Williams, and of Henry
Beauclerc, and of Stephen; till men saw visions and portents, and
thought that the foul fiend was broken loose on earth. And they
whispered oftener and oftener that the soul of Hereward haunted the
Bruneswald, where he loved to hunt the dun deer and the roe. And in the
Bruneswald, when Henry of Poitou was made abbot, [Footnote: Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, A.D. 1127.] men saw--let no man think lightly of the
marvel which we are about to relate, for it was well known all over the
country--upon the Sunday, when men sing, “Exsurge quare, O Domine,” many
hunters hunting, black, and tall, and loathly, and their hounds were
black and ugly with wide eyes, and they rode on black horses and
black bucks. And they saw them in the very deer-park of the town of
Peterborough, and in all the woods to Stamford; and the monks heard
the blasts of the horns which they blew in the night. Men of truth
kept watch upon them, and said that there might be well about twenty or
thirty horn-blowers. This was seen and heard all that Lent until Easter,
and the Norman monks of Peterborough said how it was Hereward, doomed to
wander forever with Apollyon and all his crew, because he had stolen the
riches of the Golden Borough: but the poor folk knew better, and said
that the mighty outlaw was rejoicing in the chase, blowing his horn for
Englishmen to rise against the French; and therefore it was that he was
seen first on “Arise, O Lord” Sunday.
But they were so sore trodden down that they could never rise; for the
French [Footnote: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 1137.] had filled the
land full of castles. They greatly oppressed the wretched people by
making them work at these castles; and when the castles were finished,
they filled them with devils and evil men. They took those whom they
suspected of having any goods, both men and women, and they put them
in prison for their gold and silver, and tortured them with pains
unspeakable, for never were any martyrs tormented as these were. They
hung some by their feet, and smoked them with foul smoke; some by the
thumbs, or by the head, and put burning things on their feet. They put
a knotted string round their heads, and twisted it till it went into the
brain. They put them in dungeons wherein were adders, and snakes, and
toads, and thus wore them out. Some they put into a crucet-house,--that
is, into a chest that was short and narrow, and they put sharp stones
therein, and crushed the man so that they broke all his bones. There
were hateful and grim things called Sachenteges in many of the castles,
which two or three men had enough to do to carry. This Sachentege was
made thus: It was fastened to a beam, having a sharp iron to go round a
man’s throat and neck, so that he might no ways sit, nor lie, nor
sleep, but he must bear all the iron. Many thousands they wore out with
hunger.... They were continually levying a tax from the towns, which
they called truserie, and when the wretched townsfolk had no more to
give, then burnt they all the towns, so that well mightest thou walk a
whole day’s journey or ever thou shouldest see a man settled in a town,
or its lands tilled....
“Then was corn dear, and flesh, and cheese, and butter, for there was
none in the land. Wretched men starved with hunger. Some lived on alms
who had been once rich. Some fled the country. Never was there more
misery, and never heathens acted worse than these.”
For now the sons of the Church’s darlings, of the Crusaders whom
the Pope had sent, beneath a gonfalon blessed by him, to destroy the
liberties of England, turned, by a just retribution, upon that very
Norman clergy who had abetted all their iniquities in the name of
Rome. “They spared neither church nor churchyard, but took all that was
valuable therein, and then burned the church and all together. Neither
did they spare the lands of bishops, nor of abbots, nor of priests; but
they robbed the monks and clergy, and every man plundered his neighbor
as much as he could. If two or three men came riding to a town, all
the townsfolk fled before them, and thought that they were robbers.
The bishops and clergy were forever cursing them; but this to them was
nothing, for they were all accursed and forsworn and reprobate. The
earth bare no corn: you might as well have tilled the sea, for all the
land was ruined by such deeds, and it was said openly that Christ and
his saints slept.”
And so was avenged the blood of Harold and his brothers, of Edwin and
Morcar, of Waltheof and Hereward.
And those who had the spirit of Hereward in them fled to the merry
greenwood, and became bold outlaws, with Robin Hood, Scarlet, and
John, Adam Bell, and Clym of the Cleugh, and William of Cloudeslee; and
watched with sullen joy the Norman robbers tearing in pieces each other,
and the Church who had blest their crime.
And they talked and sung of Hereward, and all his doughty deeds, over
the hearth in lone farm-houses, or in the outlaw’s lodge beneath the
hollins green; and all the burden of their song was, “Ah that
Hereward were alive again!” for they knew not that Hereward was alive
forevermore; that only his husk and shell lay mouldering there in
Crowland choir; that above them, and around them, and in them, destined
to raise them out of that bitter bondage, and mould them into a great
nation, and the parents of still greater nations in lands as yet
unknown, brooded the immortal spirit of Hereward, now purged from all
earthly dross, even the spirit of Freedom, which can never die.