Hereward, the Last of the English

“Don’t! don’t!” roared Dirk. “And don’t look at me like that” (for he feared the evil eye), “or I’ll brain you with my staff!”

“Fool, if I have lost a horse’s figure, I have not lost his swiftness. Ere thou couldst strike, I should have run a mile and back, to curse thee afresh.” And the thing ran round him, and fell on all-fours again, and ate grass.

“Mercy, mercy! And that is more than I ever asked yet of man. But it is hard,” growled he, “that a man should lose his money, because a rogue sells him a princess in disguise.”

“Then sell her again; sell her, as thou valuest thy life, to the first Christian man thou meetest. And yet no. What matters? Ere a month be over, the seven years’ enchantment will have passed, and she will return to her own shape, with her son, and vanish from thy farm, leaving thee to vain repentance, and so thou wilt both lose thy money and get her curse. Farewell, and my malison abide with thee!”

And the thing, without another word, ran right away, neighing as it went, leaving Dirk in a state of abject terror.

He went home. He cursed the mare, he cursed the man who sold her, he cursed the day he saw her, he cursed the day he was born. He told his story with exaggerations and confusions in plenty to all in the house; and terror fell on them likewise. No one, that evening, dare go down into the fen to drive the horses up; and Dirk got very drunk, went to bed, and trembled there all night (as did the rest of the household), expecting the enchanter to enter on a flaming fire-drake, at every howl of the wind.

The next morning, as Dirk was going about his business with a doleful face, casting stealthy glances at the fen, to see if the mysterious mare was still there, and a chance of his money still left, a man rode up to the door.

He was poorly clothed, with a long rusty sword by his side. A broad felt hat, long boots, and a haversack behind his saddle, showed him to be a traveller, seemingly a horse-dealer; for there followed him, tied head and tail, a brace of sorry nags.

“Heaven save all here,” quoth he, making the sign of the cross. “Can any good Christian give me a drink of milk?”

“Ale, if thou wilt,” said Dirk. “But what art thou, and whence?”

On any other day, he would have tried to coax his guest into trying a buffet with him for his horse and clothes; but this morning his heart was heavy with the thought of the enchanted mare, and he welcomed the chance of selling her to the stranger.

“We are not very fond of strangers about here, since these Flemings have been harrying our borders. If thou art a spy, it will be worse for thee.”

“I am neither spy nor Fleming; but a poor servant of the Lord Bishop of Utrecht’s, buying a garron or two for his lordship’s priests. As for these Flemings, may St. John Baptist save from them both me and you. Do you know of any man who has horses to sell hereabouts?”

“There are horses in the fen yonder,” quoth Dirk, who knew that churchmen were likely to give a liberal price, and pay in good silver.

“I saw them as I rode up. And a fine lot they are; but of too good a stamp for my short purse, or for my holy master’s riding,—a fat priest likes a quiet nag, my master.”

“Humph. Well, if quietness is what you need, there is a mare down there, a child might ride her with a thread of wool. But as for price,—and she has a colt, too, running by her.”

“Ah?” quoth the horseman. “Well, your Walcheren folk make good milk, that’s certain. A colt by her? That’s awkward. My Lord does not like young horses; and it would be troublesome, too, to take the thing along with me.”

The less anxious the dealer seemed to buy, the more anxious grew Dirk to sell; but he concealed his anxiety, and let the stranger turn away, thanking him for his drink.

“I say!” he called after him. “You might look at her as you ride past the herd.”

The stranger assented, and they went down into the fen, and looked over the precious mare, whose feats were afterwards sung by many an English fireside, or in the forest, beneath the hollins green, by such as Robin Hood and his merry men. The ugliest, as well as the swiftest, of mares, she was, say the old chroniclers; and it was not till the stranger had looked twice at her, that he forgot her great chuckle head, greyhound-flanks, and drooping hind-quarters, and began to see the great length of those same quarters,—the thighs let down into the hocks, the arched loin, the extraordinary girth through the saddle, the sloping shoulder, the long arms, the flat knees, the large, well-set hoofs, and all the other points which showed her strength and speed, and justified her fame.

“She might carry a big man like you through the mud,” said he, carelessly, “but as for pace, one cannot expect that with such a chuckle head. And if one rode her through a town, the boys would call after one, ‘All head and no tail.’ Why, I can’t see her tail for her quarters, it is so ill set on.”

“Ill set on, or none,” said Dirk, testily; “don’t go to speak against her pace till you have seen it. Here, lass!”

Dirk was, in his heart, rather afraid of the princess; but he was comforted when she came up to him like a dog.

“She’s as sensible as a woman,” said he; and then grumbled to himself, “may be she knows I mean to part with her.”

“Lend me your saddle,” said he to the stranger.

The stranger did so; and Dirk mounting galloped her in a ring. There was no doubt of her powers, as soon as she began to move.

“I hope you won’t remember this against me, madam,” said Dirk, as soon as he got out of the stranger’s hearing. “I can’t do less than sell you to a Christian. And certainly I have been as good a master to you as if I’d known who you were; but if you wish to stay with me you’ve only to kick me off, and say so, and I’m yours to command.”

“Well, she can gallop a bit,” said the stranger, as Dirk pulled her up and dismounted; “but an ugly brute she is nevertheless, and such a one as I should not care to ride, for I am a gay man among the ladies. However, what is your price?”

Dirk named twice as much as he would have taken.

“Half that, you mean.” And the usual haggle began.

“Tell thee what,” said Dirk at last, “I am a man who has his fancies; and this shall be her price; half thy bid, and a box on the ear.”

The demon of covetousness had entered Dirk’s heart. What if he got the money, brained or at least disabled the stranger, and so had a chance of selling the mare a second time to some fresh comer?

“Thou art a strange fellow,” quoth the horse-dealer. “But so be it.”

Dirk chuckled. “He does not know,” thought he, “that he has to do with Dirk Hammerhand,” and he clenched his fist in anticipation of his rough joke.

“There,” quoth the stranger, counting out the money carefully, “is thy coin. And there—is thy box on the ear.”

And with a blow which rattled over the fen, he felled Dirk Hammerhand to the ground.

He lay senseless for a moment, and then looked wildly round. His jaw was broken.

“Villain!” groaned he. “It was I who was to give the buffet, not thou!”

“Art mad?” asked the stranger, as he coolly picked up the coins, which Dirk had scattered in his fall. “It is the seller’s business to take, and the buyer’s to give.”

And while Dirk roared for help in vain he leapt on mare Swallow and rode off shouting,

“Aha! Dirk Hammerhand! So you thought to knock a hole in my skull, as you have done to many a better man than yourself. He is a lucky man who never meets his match, Dirk. I shall give your love to the Enchanted Prince, my faithful serving-man, whom they call Martin Lightfoot.”

Dirk cursed the day he was born. Instead of the mare and colt, he had got the two wretched garrons which the stranger had left, and a face which made him so tender of his own teeth, that he never again offered to try a buffet with a stranger.

CHAPTER XIV. – HOW HEREWARD RODE INTO BRUGES LIKE A BEGGARMAN

The spring and summer had passed, and the autumn was almost over, when great news came to the Court of Bruges, where Torfrida was now a bower-maiden.

The Hollanders had been beaten till they submitted; at least for the present. There was peace, at least for the present, through all the isles of Scheldt; and more than all, the lovely Countess Gertrude had resolved to reward her champion by giving him her hand, and the guardianship of her lands and the infant son.

And Hereward?

From him, or of him, there was no word. That he was alive and fighting, was all the messenger could say.

Then Robert came back to Bruges, with a gallant retinue, leading home his bride. And there met him his father and mother, and his brother of Mons, and Richilda the beautiful and terrible sorceress,—who had not yet stained her soul with those fearful crimes which she had expiated by fearful penances in after years, when young Arnoul, the son for whom she had sold her soul, lay dead through the very crimes by which she had meant to make him a mighty prince. And Torfrida went out with them to meet Count Robert, and looked for Hereward, till her eyes were ready to fall out of her head. But Hereward was not with them.

“He must be left behind, commanding the army,” thought she. “But he might have sent one word!”

There was a great feast that day, of course; and Torfrida sat thereat: but she could not eat. Nevertheless she was too proud to let the knights know what was in her heart; so she chatted and laughed as gayly as the rest, watching always for any word of Hereward. But none mentioned his name.

The feast was long; the ladies did not rise till nigh bedtime; and then the men drank on.

They went up to the Queen-Countess’s chamber; where a solemn undressing of that royal lady usually took place.

The etiquette was this. The Queen-Countess sat in her chair of state in the midst, till her shoes were taken off, and her hair dressed for the night. Right and left of her, according to their degrees, sat the other great ladies; and behind each of them, where they could find places, the maidens.

It was Torfrida’s turn to take off the royal shoes; and she advanced into the middle of the semicircle, slippers in hand.

“Stop there!” said the Countess-Queen.

Whereat Torfrida stopped, very much frightened.

“Countesses and ladies,” said the mistress. “There are, in Provence and the South, what I wish there were here in Flanders,—Courts of Love, at which all offenders against the sacred laws of Venus and Cupid are tried by an assembly of their peers, and punished according to their deserts.”

Torfrida turned scarlet.

“I know not why we, countesses and ladies, should have less knowledge of the laws of love than those gayer dames of the South, whose blood runs—to judge by her dark hair—in the veins of yon fair maid.”

There was a silence. Torfrida was the most beautiful woman in the room; more beautiful than even Richilda the terrible: and therefore there were few but were glad to see her—as it seemed—in trouble.

Torfrida’s mother began whimpering, and praying to six or seven saints at once. But nobody marked her,—possibly not even the saints; being preoccupied with Torfrida.

“I hear, fair maid,—for that you are that I will do you the justice to confess,—that you are old enough to be married this four years since.”

Torfrida stood like a stone, frightened out of her wits, plentiful as they were.

“Why are you not married?”

There was, of course, no answer.

“I hear that knights have fought for you; lost their lives for you.”

“I did not bid them,” gasped Torfrida, longing that the floor would open, and swallow up the Queen-Countess and all her kin and followers, as it did for the enemies of the blessed Saint Dunstan, while he was arguing with them in an upper room at Calne.

“And that the knight of St. Valeri, to whom you gave your favor, now lies languishing of wounds got in your cause.”

“I—I did not bid him fight,” gasped Torfrida, now wishing that the floor would open and swallow up herself.

“And that he who overthrew the knight of St. Valeri,—to whom you gave that favor, and more—”

“I gave him nothing a maiden might not give,” cried Torfrida, so fiercely that the Queen-Countess recoiled somewhat.

“I never said that you did, girl. Your love you gave him. Can you deny that?”

Torfrida laughed bitterly: her Southern blood was rising.

“I put my love out to nurse, instead of weaning it, as many a maiden has done before me. When my love cried for hunger and cold, I took it back again to my own bosom: and whether it has lived or died there, is no one’s matter but my own.”

“Hunger and cold? I hear that him to whom you gave your love you drove out to the cold, bidding him go fight in his bare shirt, if he wished to win your love.”

“I did not. He angered me—he—” and Torfrida found herself in the act of accusing Hereward.

She stopped instantly.

“What more, Majesty? If this be true, what more may not be true of such a one as I? I submit myself to your royal grace.”

“She has confessed. What punishment, ladies, does she deserve? Or, rather, what punishment would her cousins of Provence inflict, did we send her southward, to be judged by their Courts of Love?”

One lady said one thing, one another. Some spoke cruelly, some worse than cruelly; for they were coarse ages, the ages of faith; and ladies said things then in open company which gentlemen would be ashamed to say in private now.

“Marry her to a fool,” said Richilda, at last, bitterly.

“That is too common a misfortune,” answered the lady of France. “If we did no more to her, she might grow as proud as her betters.”

Adela knew that her daughter-in-law considered her husband a fool; and was somewhat of the same opinion, though she hated Richilda.

“No,” said she; “we will do more. We will marry her to the first man who enters the castle.”

Torfrida looked at her mistress to see if she were mad. But the Countess-Queen was serene and sane. Then Torfrida’s southern heat and northern courage burst forth.

“You—marry—me—to—” said she, slowly, with eyes so fierce, and lips so vivid, that Richilda herself quailed.

There was a noise of shouting and laughing in the court below, which made all turn and listen.

The next moment a serving-man came in, puzzled and inclined to laugh.

“May it please your Majesty, here is the strangest adventure. There is ridden into the castle-yard a beggar-man, with scarce a shirt to his back, on a great ugly mare, with a foal running by her, and a fool behind him, carrying lance and shield. And he says that he is come to fight any knight of the Court, ragged as he stands, for the fairest lady in the Court, be she who she may, if she have not a wedded husband already.”

“And what says my Lord Marquis?”

“That it is a fair challenge, and a good adventure; and that fight he shall, if any man will answer his defiance.”

“And I say, tell my Lord the Marquis, that fight he shall not: for he shall have the fairest maiden in this Court for the trouble of carrying her away; and that I, Adela of France, will give her to him. So let that beggar dismount, and be brought up hither to me.”

There was silence again. Torfrida looked round her once more, to see whether or not she was dreaming, and whether there was one human being to whom she could appeal. Her mother sat praying and weeping in a corner. Torfrida looked at her with one glance of scorn, which she confessed and repented, with bitter tears, many a year after, in a foreign land; and then turned to bay with the spirit of her old Paladin ancestor, who choked the Emir at Mont Majeur.

Married to a beggar! It was a strange accident; and an ugly one; and a great cruelty and wrong. But it was not impossible, hardly improbable, in days when the caprice of the strong created accidents, and when cruelty and wrong went for nothing, even with very kindly honest folk. So Torfrida faced the danger, as she would have faced that of a kicking horse, or a flooded ford; and like the nut-brown bride,

     “She pulled out a little penknife,       That was both keen and sharp.”

and considered that the beggar-man could wear no armor, and that she wore none either. For if she succeeded in slaying that beggar-man, she might need to slay herself after, to avoid being—according to the fashion of those days—burnt alive.

So when the arras was drawn back, and that beggar-man came into the room, instead of shrieking, fainting, hiding, or turning, she made three steps straight toward him, looking him in the face like a wild-cat at bay. Then she threw up her arms; and fell upon his neck.

It was Hereward himself. Filthy, ragged: but Hereward.

His shirt was brown with gore, and torn with wounds; and through its rents showed more than one hardly healed scar. His hair and beard was all in elf-locks; and one heavy cut across the head had shorn not only hair, but brain-pan, very close. Moreover, any nose, save that of Love, might have required perfume.

But Hereward it was; and regardless of all beholders, she lay upon his neck, and never stirred nor spoke.

“I call you to witness, ladies,” cried the Queen-Countess, “that I am guiltless. She has given herself to this beggar-man of her own free will. What say you?” And she turned to Torfrida’s mother.

Torfrida’s mother only prayed and whimpered.

“Countesses and Ladies,” said the Queen-Countess, “there will be two weddings to-morrow. The first will be that of my son Robert and my pretty Lady Gertrude here. The second will be that of my pretty Torfrida and Hereward.”

“And the second bride,” said the Countess Gertrude, rising and taking Torfrida in her arms, “will be ten times prettier than the first. There, sir, I have done all you asked of me. Now go and wash yourself.”

“Hereward,” said Torfrida, a week after, “and did you really never change your shirt all that time?”

“Never. I kept my promise.”

“But it must have been very nasty.”

“Well, I bathed now and then.”

“But it must have been very cold.”

“I am warm enough now.”

“But did you never comb your hair, neither?”

“Well, I won’t say that. Travellers find strange bed-fellows. But I had half a mind never to do it at all, just to spite you.”

“And what matter would it have been to me?”

“O, none. It is only a Danish fashion we have of keeping clean.”

“Clean! You were dirty enough when you came home. How silly you were! If you had sent me but one word!”

“You would have fancied me beaten, and scolded me all over again. I know your ways now, Torfrida.”

CHAPTER XV. – HOW EARL TOSTI GODWINSSON CAME TO ST. OMER

The winter passed in sweet madness; and for the first time in her life, Torfrida regretted the lengthening of the days, and the flowering of the primroses, and the return of the now needless wryneck; for they warned her that Hereward must forth again, to the wars in Scaldmariland, which had broken out again, as was to be expected, as soon as Count Robert and his bride had turned their backs.

And Hereward, likewise, for the first time in his life, was loath to go to war. He was, doubtless, rich enough in this world’s goods. Torfrida herself was rich, and seems to have had the disposal of her own property, for her mother is not mentioned in connection therewith. Hereward seems to have dwelt in her house at St. Omer as long as he remained in Flanders. He had probably amassed some treasure of his own by the simple, but then most aristocratic, method of plunder. He had, too, probably, grants of land in Holland from the Frison, the rents whereof were not paid as regularly as might be. Moreover, as “Magister Militum,” (“Master of the Knights,”) he had, it is likely, pay as well as honor. And he approved himself worthy of his good fortune. He kept forty gallant housecarles in his hall all the winter, and Torfrida and her lasses made and mended their clothes. He gave large gifts to the Abbey of St. Bertin; and had masses sung for the souls of all whom he had slain, according to a rough list which he furnished,—bidding the monks not to be chary of two or three masses extra at times, as his memory was short, and he might have sent more souls to purgatory than he had recollected. He gave great alms at his door to all the poor. He befriended, especially, all shipwrecked and needy mariners, feeding and clothing them, and begging their freedom as a gift from Baldwin. He feasted the knights of the neighborhood, who since his baresark campaign, had all vowed him the most gallant of warriors, and since his accession of wealth, the most courteous of gentlemen; and so all went merrily, as it is written, “As long as thou doest well unto thyself, men will speak well of thee.”

So he would have fain stayed at home at St. Omer; but he was Robert’s man, and his good friend likewise; and to the wars he must go forth once more; and for eight or nine weary months Torfrida was alone: but very happy, for a certain reason of her own.

At last the short November days came round; and a joyful woman was fair Torfrida, when Martin Lightfoot ran into the hall, and throwing himself down on the rushes like a dog, announced that Hereward and his men would be home before noon, and then fell fast asleep.

There was bustling to and fro of her and her maids; decking of the hall in the best hangings; strewing of fresh rushes, to the dislodgement of Martin; setting out of square tables, and stoops and mugs thereon; cooking of victuals, broaching of casks; and above all, for Hereward’s self, heating of much water, and setting out, in the inner chamber, of the great bath-tub and bath-sheet, which was the special delight of a hero fresh from the war.

And by midday the streets of St. Omer rang with clank and tramp and trumpet-blare, and in marched Hereward and all his men, and swung round through the gateway into the court, where Torfrida stood to welcome them, as fair as day, a silver stirrup-cup in her hand. And while the men were taking off their harness and dressing their horses, she and Hereward went in together, and either took such joy of the other, that a year’s parting was forgot in a minute’s meeting.

“Now,” cried she, in a tone half of triumph, half of tenderness, “look there!”

“A cradle? And a baby?”

“Your baby.”

“Is it a boy?” asked Hereward, who saw in his mind’s eye a thing which would grow and broaden at his knee year by year, and learn from him to ride, to shoot, to fight. “Happy for him if he does not learn worse from me,” thought Hereward, with a sudden movement of humility and contrition, which was surely marked in heaven; for Torfrida marked it on earth.

But she mistook its meaning.

“Do not be vexed. It is a girl.”

“Never mind!” as if it was a calamity over which he was bound to comfort the mother. “If she is half as beautiful as you look at this moment, what splintering of lances there will be about her! How jolly, to see the lads hewing at each other, while our daughter sits in the pavilion, as Queen of Love!”

Torfrida laughed. “You think of nothing but fighting, bear of the North Seas.”

“Every one to his trade. Well, yes, I am glad that it is a girl.”

“I thought you seemed vexed. Why did you cross yourself?”

“Because I thought to myself, how unfit I was to bring up a boy to be such a knight as—as you would have him; how likely I was, ere all was over, to make him as great a ruffian as myself.”

“Hereward! Hereward!” and she threw her arms round his neck for the tenth time. “Blessed be you for those words! Those are the fears which never come true, for they bring down from heaven the grace of God, to guard the humble and contrite heart from that which it fears.”

“Ah, Torfrida, I wish I were as good as you!”

“Now—my joy and my life, my hero and my scald—I have great news for you, as well as a little baby. News from England.”

“You, and a baby over and above, are worth all England to me.”

“But listen: Edward the king is dead!”

“Then there is one fool less on earth; and one saint more, I suppose, in heaven.”

“And Harold Godwinsson is king in his stead. And he has married your niece Aldytha, and sworn friendship with her brothers.”

“I expected no less. Well, every dog has his day.”

“And his will be a short one. William of Normandy has sworn to drive him out.”

“Then he will do it. And so the poor little Swan-neck is packed into a convent, that the houses of Godwin and Leofric may rush into each other’s arms, and perish together! Fools, fools, fools! I will hear no more of such a mad world. My queen, tell me about your sweet self. What is all this to me? Am I not a wolf’s head, and a landless man?”