Hereward, the Last of the English

“O my king, have not the stars told me that you will be an earl and a ruler of men, when all your foes are wolves’ heads as you are now? And the weird is coming true already. Tosti Godwinsson is in the town at this moment, an outlaw and a wolf’s head himself.”

Hereward laughed a great laugh.

“Aha! Every man to his right place at last. Tell me about that, for it will amuse me. I have heard naught of him since he sent the king his Hereford thralls’ arms and legs in the pickle-barrels; to show him, he said, that there was plenty of cold meat on his royal demesnes.”

“You have not heard, then, how he murdered in his own chamber at York, Gamel Ormsson and Ulf Dolfinsson?”

“That poor little lad? Well, a gracious youth was Tosti, ever since he went to kill his brother Harold with teeth and claws, like a wolf; and as he grows in years, he grows in grace. But what said Ulf’s father and the Gospatricks?”

“Dolfin and young Gospatrick were I know not where. But old Gospatrick came down to Westminster, to demand law for his grandnephew’s blood.”

“A silly thing of the old Thane, to walk into the wolf’s den.”

“And so he found. He was stabbed there, three days after Christmas-tide, and men say that Queen Edith did it, for love of Tosti, her brother. Then Dolfin and young Gospatrick took to the sea, and away to Scotland: and so Tosti rid himself of all the good blood in the North, except young Waltheof Siwardsson, whose turn, I fear, will come next.”

“How comes he here, then?”

“The Northern men rose at that, killed his servant at York, took all his treasures, and marched down to Northampton, plundering and burning. They would have marched on London town, if Harold had not met them there from the king. There they cried out against Tosti, and all his taxes, and his murders, and his changing Canute’s laws, and would have young Morcar for their earl. A tyrant they would not endure. Free they were born and bred, they said, and free they would live and die. Harold must needs do justice, even on his own brother.”

“Especially when he knows that that brother is his worst foe.”

“Harold is a better man than you take him for, my Hereward. But be that as it may, Morcar is earl, and Tosti outlawed, and here in St. Omer, with wife and child.”

“My nephew Earl of Northumbria! As I might have been, if I had been a wiser man.”

“If you had, you would never have found me.”

“True, my queen! They say Heaven tempers the wind to the shorn lamb; but it tempers it too, sometimes, to the hobbled ass; and so it has done by me. And so the rogues have fallen out, and honest men may come by their own. For, as the Northern men have done by one brother, so will the Eastern men do by the other. Let Harold see how many of those fat Lincolnshire manors, which he has seized into his own hands, he holds by this day twelve months. But what is all this to me, my queen, while you and I can kiss, and laugh the world to scorn?”

“This to you, beloved, that, great as you are, Torfrida must have you greater still; and out of all this coil and confusion you may win something, if you be wise.”

“Sweet lips, be still, and let us love instead of plotting.”

“And this, too—you shall not stop my mouth—that Harold Godwinsson has sent a letter to you.”

“Harold Godwinsson is my very good lord,” sneered Hereward.

“And this it said, with such praises and courtesies concerning you, as made thy wife’s heart beat high with pride: ‘If Hereward Leofricsson will come home to England, he shall have his rights in law again, and his manors in Lincolnshire, and a thanes-ship in East Anglia, and manors for his men-at-arms; and if that be not enough, he shall have an earldom, as soon as there is one to give.’”

“And what says to that, Torfrida, Hereward’s queen?”

“You will not be angry if I answered the letter for you?”

“If you answered it one way,—no. If another,—yes.”

Torfrida trembled. Then she looked Hereward full in the face with her keen clear eyes.

“Now shall I see whether I have given myself to Hereward in vain, body and soul, or whether I have trained him to be my true and perfect knight.”

“You answered, then,” said Hereward, “thus—”

“Say on,” said she, turning her face away again.

“Hereward Leofricsson tells Harold Godwinsson that he is his equal, and not his man; and that he will never put his hands between the hands of a son of Godwin. An Etheling born, a king of the house of Cerdic, outlawed him from his right, and none but an Etheling born shall give him his right again.”

“I said it, I said it. Those were my very words!” and Torfrida burst into tears, while Hereward kissed her, almost fawned upon her, calling her his queen, his saga-wife, his guardian angel.

“I was sorely tempted,” sobbed she. “Sorely. To see you, rich and proud, upon your own lands, an earl may be,—may be, I thought at whiles, a king. But it could not be. It did not stand with honor, my hero,—not with honor.”

“Not with honor. Get me gay garments out of the chest, and let us go in royally, and royally feast my jolly riders.”

“Stay awhile,” said she, kissing his head as she combed and curled his long golden locks; and her own raven ones, hardly more beautiful, fell over them and mingled with them. “Stay awhile, my pride. There is another spell in the wind, stirred up by devil or witch-wife, and it comes from Tosti Godwinsson.”

“Tosti, the cold-meat butcher? What has he to say to me?”

“This,—‘If Hereward will come with me to William of Normandy, and help us against Harold, the perjured, then will William do for him all that Harold would have done, and more beside.’”

“And what answered Torfrida?”

“It was not so said to me that I could answer. I had it by a side-wind, through the Countess Judith.” [Footnote: Tosti’s wife, Earl Baldwin’s daughter, sister of Matilda, William the Conqueror’s wife.]

“And she had it from her sister, Matilda.”

“And she, of course, from Duke William himself.”

“And what would you have answered, if you had answered, pretty one?”

“Nay, I know not. I cannot be always queen. You must be king sometimes.”

Torfrida did not say that this latter offer had been a much sorer temptation than the former.

“And has not the base-born Frenchman enough knights of his own, that he needs the help of an outlaw like me?”

“He asks for help from all the ends of the earth. He has sent that Lanfranc to the Pope; and there is talk of a sacred banner, and a crusade against England.”

“The monks are with him, then?” said Hereward. “That is one more count in their score. But I am no monk. I have shorn many a crown, but I have kept my own hair as yet, you see.”

“I do see,” said she, playing with his locks. “But,—but he wants you. He has sent for Angevins, Poitevins, Bretons, Flemings,—promising lands, rank, money, what not. Tosti is recruiting for him here in Flanders now. He will soon be off to the Orkneys, I suspect, or to Sweyn in Denmark, after Vikings.”

“Here? Has Baldwin promised him men?”

“What could the good old man do? He could not refuse his own son-in-law. This, at least, I know, that a messenger has gone off to Scotland, to Gilbert of Ghent, to bring or send any bold Flemings who may prefer fat England to lean Scotland.”

“Lands, rank, money, eh? So he intends that the war should pay itself—out of English purses. What answer would you have me make to that, wife mine?”

“The Duke is a terrible man. What if he conquers? And conquer he will.”

“Is that written in your stars?”

“It is, I fear. And if he have the Pope’s blessing, and the Pope’s banner—Dare we resist the Holy Father?”

“Holy step-father, you mean; for a step-father he seems to prove to merry England. But do you really believe that an old man down in Italy can make a bit of rag conquer by saying a few prayers at it? If I am to believe in a magic flag, give me Harold Hardraade’s Landcyda, at least, with Harold and his Norsemen behind it.”

“William’s French are as good as those Norsemen, man for man; and horsed withal, Hereward.”

“That may be,” said he, half testily, with a curse on the tanner’s grandson and his French popinjays, “and our Englishmen are as good as any two Norsemen, as the Norse themselves say.” He could not divine, and Torfrida hardly liked to explain to him the glamour which the Duke of Normandy had cast over her, as the representative of chivalry, learning, civilization, a new and nobler life for men than the world had yet seen; one which seemed to connect the young races of Europe with the wisdom of the ancients and the magic glories of old Imperial Rome.

“You are not fair to that man,” said she, after a while. “Hereward, Hereward, have I not told you how, though body be strong, mind is stronger? That is what that man knows; and therefore he has prospered. Therefore his realms are full of wise scholars, and thriving schools, and fair minsters, and his men are sober, and wise, and learned like clerks—”

“And false like clerks, as he is himself. Schoolcraft and honesty never went yet together, Torfrida—”

“Not in me?”

“You are not a clerk, you are a woman, and more, you are an elf, a goddess; there is none like you. But hearken to me. This man is false. All the world knows it.”

“He promises, they say, to govern England justly as King Edward’s heir, according to the old laws and liberties of the realm.”

“Of course. If he does not come as the old monk’s heir, how does he come at all? If he does not promise our—their, I mean, for I am no Englishman—laws and liberties, who will join him? But his riders and hirelings will not fight for nothing. They must be paid with English land, and English land they will have, for they will be his men, whoever else are not. They will be his darlings, his housecarles, his hawks to sit on his fist and fly at his game; and English bones will be picked clean to feed them. And you would have me help to do that, Torfrida? Is that the honor of which you spoke so boldly to Harold Godwinsson?”

Torfrida was silent. To have brought Hereward under the influence of William was an old dream of hers. And yet she was proud at the dream being broken thus. And so she said:

“You are right. It is better for you,—it is better than to be William’s darling, and the greatest earl in his court,—to feel that you are still an Englishman. Promise me but one thing, that you will make no fierce or desperate answer to the Duke.”

“And why not answer the tanner as he deserves?”

“Because my art, and my heart too, tells me that your fortunes and his are linked together. I have studied my tables, but they would not answer. Then I cast lots in Virgilius—”

“And what found you there?” asked he, anxiously.

“I opened at the lines,—

  ‘Pacem me exanimis et Martis sorte peremptis   Oratis? Equidem et vivis concedere vellem.’”

“And what means that?”

“That you may have to pray him to pity the slain; and have for answer, that their lands may be yours if you will but make peace with him. At least, do not break hopelessly with that man. Above all, never use that word concerning him which you used just now; the word which he never forgives. Remember what he did to them of Alençon, when they hung raw hides over the wall, and cried, ‘Plenty of work for the tanner!’”

“Let him pick out the prisoners’ eyes, and chop off their hands, and shoot them into the town from mangonels,—he must go far and thrive well ere I give him a chance of doing that by me.”

“Hereward, Hereward, my own! Boast not, but fear God. Who knows, in such a world as this, to what end we may come? Night after night I am haunted with spectres, eyeless, handless—”

“This is cold comfort for a man just out of hard fighting in the ague-fens!”

She threw her arms round him, and held him as if she would never let him go.

“When you die, I die. And you will not die: you will be great and glorious, and your name will be sung by scald and minstrel through many a land, far and wide. Only be not rash. Be not high-minded. Promise me to answer this man wisely. The more crafty he is, the more crafty must you be likewise.”

“Let us tell this mighty hero, then,” said Hereward,—trying to laugh away her fears, and perhaps his own,—“that while he has the Holy Father on his side, he can need no help from a poor sinful worm like me.”

“Hereward, Hereward!”

“Why, is there aught about hides in that?”

“I want,—I want an answer which may not cut off all hope in case of the worst.”

“Then let us say boldly, ‘On the day that William is King of all England, Hereward will come and put his hands between his, and be his man.’”

That message was sent to William at Rouen. He laughed,—

“It is a fair challenge from a valiant man. The day shall come when I will claim it.”

Tosti and Hereward passed that winter in St. Omer, living in the same street, passing each other day by day, and never spoke a word one to the other.

Robert the Frison heard of it, and tried to persuade Hereward.

“Let him purge himself of the murder of Ulf, the boy, son of my friend Dolfin; and after that, of Gamel, son of Orm; and after that, again, of Gospatrick, my father’s friend, whom his sister slew for his sake; and then an honest man may talk with him. Were he not my good lord’s brother-in-law, as he is, more’s the pity, I would challenge him to fight à l’outrance, with any weapons he might choose.”

“Heaven protect him in that case,” quoth Robert the Frison.

“As it is, I will keep the peace. And I will see that my men keep the peace, though there are Scarborough and Bamborough lads among them, who long to cut his throat upon the streets. But more I will not do.”

So Tosti sulked through the winter at St. Omer, and then went off to get help from Sweyn, of Denmark, and failing that, from Harold Hardraade of Norway. But how he sped there must be read in the words of a cunninger saga-man than this chronicler, even in those of the “Icelandic Homer,” Snorro Sturleson.

CHAPTER XVI. – HOW HEREWARD WAS ASKED TO SLAY AN OLD COMRADE

In those days Hereward went into Bruges, to Marquis Baldwin, about his business. And as he walked in Bruges street, he met an old friend, Gilbert of Ghent.

He had grown somewhat stouter, and somewhat grayer, in the last ten years: but he was as hearty as ever; and as honest, according to his own notions of honesty.

He shook Hereward by both hands, clapt him on the back, swore with many oaths, that he had heard of his fame in all lands, that he always said that he would turn out a champion and a gallant knight, and had said it long before he killed the bear. As for killing it, it was no more than he expected, and nothing to what Hereward had done since, and would do yet.

Wherefrom Hereward opined that Gilbert had need of him.

They chatted on: Hereward asking after old friends, and sometimes after old foes, whom he had long since forgiven; for though he always avenged an injury, he never bore malice for one; a distinction less common now than then, when a man’s honor, as well as his safety, depended on his striking again, when he was struck.

“And how is little Alftruda? Big she must be now?” asked he at last.

“The fiend fly away with her,—or rather, would that he had flown away with her, before ever I saw the troublesome little jade. Big? She is grown into the most beautiful lass that ever was seen,—which is, what a young fellow like you cares for; and more trouble to me than all my money, which is what an old fellow like me cares for. It is partly about her that I am over here now. Fool that I was, ever to let an Etheliza [Footnote: A princess of the royal blood of Cerdic, and therefore of Edward the Confessor.] into my house”; and Gilbert swore a great deal.

“How was she an Etheliza?” asked Hereward, who cared nothing about the matter. “And how came she into your house? I never could understand that, any more than how the bear came there.”

“Ah! As to the bear, I have my secrets, which I tell no one. He is dead and buried, thanks to you.”

“And I sleep on his skin every night.”

“You do, my little Champion? Well, warm is the bed that is well earned. But as for her;—see here, and I’ll tell you. She was Gospatrick’s ward and kinswoman,—how, I do not rightly know. But this I know, that she comes from Uchtred, the earl whom Canute slew, and that she is heir to great estates in Northumberland.

“Gospatrick, that fought at Dunsinane?”

“Yes, not the old Thane, his uncle, whom Tosti has murdered; but Gospatrick, King Malcolm’s cousin, Dolfin’s father. Well, she was his ward. He gave me her to keep, for he wanted her out of harm’s way—the lass having a bonny dower, lands and money—till he could marry her up to one of his sons. I took her; of course I was not going to do other men’s work for naught; so I would have married her up to my poor boy, if he had but lived. But he would not live, as you know. Then I would have married her to you, and made you my heir, I tell you honestly, if you had not flown off, like a hot-headed young springald, as you were then.”

“You were very kind. But how is she an Etheliza?”

“Etheliza? Twice over. Her father was of high blood among those Saxons; and if not, are not all the Gospatricks Ethelings? Their grandmother, Uchtred’s wife, was Ethelred, Evil-Counsel’s daughter, King Edward of London’s sister; and I have heard that this girl’s grandfather was their son,—but died young,—or was killed with his father. Who cares?”

“Not I,” quoth Hereward.

“Well—he wants to marry her to Dolfin, his eldest son.”

“Why, Dolfin had a wife when I was at Dunsinane.”

“But she is dead since, and young Ulf, her son, murdered by Tosti last winter.”

“I know.”

“Whereon Gospatrick sends to me for the girl and her dowry. What was I to do? Give her up? Little it is, lad, that I ever gave up, after I had it once in my grip, or I should be a poorer man than I am now. Have and hold, is my rule. What should I do? What I did. I was coming hither on business of my own, so I put her on board ship, and half her dower,—where the other half is, I know; and man must draw me with wild horses, before he finds out;—and came here to my kinsman, Baldwin, to see if he had any proper young fellow to whom we might marry the lass, and so go shares in her money and the family connection. Could a man do more wisely?”

“Impossible,” quoth Hereward.

“But see how a wise man is lost by fortune. When I come here, whom should I find but Dolfin himself? The dog had scent of my plan, all the way from Dolfinston there, by Peebles. He hunts me out, the hungry Scotch wolf; rides for Leith, takes ship, and is here to meet me, having accused me before Baldwin as a robber and ravisher, and offers to prove his right to the jade on my body in single combat.”

“The villain!” quoth Hereward. “There is no modesty left on earth, nor prudence either. To come here, where he might have stumbled on Tosti, who murdered his son, and I would surely do the like by him, himself. Lucky for him that Tosti is off to Norway on his own errand.”

“Modesty and prudence? None now-a-days, young sire; nor justice either, I think; for when Baldwin hears us both—and I told my story as cannily as I could—he tells me that he is very sorry for an old vassal and kinsman, and so forth,—but I must either disgorge or fight.”

“Then fight,” quoth Hereward.

“‘Per se aut per campioneem,’—that’s the old law, you know.”

“Not a doubt of it.”

“Look you, Hereward. I am no coward, nor a clumsy man of my hands.”

“He is either fool or liar who says so.”

“But see. I find it hard work to hold my own in Scotland now. Folks don’t like me, or trust me; I can’t say why.”

“How unreasonable!” quoth Hereward.

“And if I kill this youth, and so have a blood-feud with Gospatrick, I have a hornet’s nest about my ears. Not only he and his sons,—who are masters of Scotch Northumberland, [Footnote: Between Tweed and Forth.]—but all his cousins; King Malcolm, and Donaldbain, and, for aught I know, Harold and the Godwinssons, if he bid them take up the quarrel. And beside, that Dolfin is a big man. If you cross Scot and Saxon, you breed a very big man. If you cross again with a Dane or a Norseman, you breed a giant. His grandfather was a Scots prince, his grandmother an English Etheliza, his mother a Norse princess, as you know,—and how big he is, you should remember. He weighs half as much again as I, and twice as much as you.”

“Butchers count by weight, and knights by courage,” quoth Hereward.

“Very well for you, who are young and active; but I take him to be a better man than that ogre of Cornwall, whom they say you killed.”

“What care I? Let him be twice as good, I’d try him.”

“Ah! I knew you were the old Hereward still. Now hearken to me. Be my champion. You owe me a service, lad. Fight that man, challenge him in open field. Kill him, as you are sure to do. Claim the lass, and win her,—and then we will part her dower. And (though it is little that I care for young lasses’ fancies), to tell you truth, she never favored any man but you.”

Hereward started at the snare which had been laid for him; and then fell into a very great laughter.

“My most dear and generous host: you are the wiser, the older you grow. A plan worthy of Solomon! You are rid of Sieur Dolfin without any blame to yourself.”

“Just so.”

“While I win the lass, and, living here in Flanders, am tolerably safe from any blood-feud of the Gospatricks.”

“Just so.”

“Perfect: but there is only one small hindrance to the plan; and that is—that I am married already.”

Gilbert stopped short, and swore a great oath.

“But,” he said, after a while, “does that matter so much after all?”

“Very little, indeed, as all the world knows, if one has money enough, and power enough.”

“And you have both,” they say.

“But, still more unhappily, my money is my wife’s.”

“Peste!”

“And more unhappily still, I am so foolishly fond of her, that I would sooner have her in her smock, than any other woman with half England for a dower.”

“Then I suppose I must look out for another champion.”

“Or save yourself the trouble, by being—just as a change—an honest man.”

“I believe you are right,” said Gilbert, laughing; “but it is hard to begin so late in life.”

“And after one has had so little practice.”

“Aha! Thou art the same merry dog of a Hereward. Come along. But could we not poison this Dolfin, after all?”

To which proposal Hereward gave no encouragement.

“And now, my très beausire, may I ask you, in return, what business brings you to Flanders?”

“Have I not told you?”

“No, but I have guessed. Gilbert of Ghent is on his way to William of Normandy.”

“Well. Why not?”

“Why not?—certainly. And has brought out of Scotland a few gallant gentlemen, and stout housecarles of my acquaintance.”

Gilbert laughed.

“You may well say that. To tell you the truth, we have flitted, bag and baggage. I don’t believe that we have left a dog behind.”

“So you intend to ‘colonize’ in England, as the learned clerks would call it? To settle; to own land; and enter, like the Jews of old, into goodly houses which you builded not, farms which you tilled not, wells which you digged not, and orchards which you planted not?”

“Why, what a clerk you are! That sounds like Scripture.”

“And so it is. I heard it in a French priest’s sermon, which he preached here in St. Omer a Sunday or two back, exhorting all good Catholics, in the Pope’s name, to enter upon the barbarous land of England, tainted with the sin of Simon Magus, and expel thence the heretical priests, and so forth, promising them that they should have free leave to cut long thongs out of other men’s hides.”

Gilbert chuckled.

“You laugh. The priest did not; for after sermon I went up to him, and told him how I was an Englishman, and an outlaw, and a desperate man, who feared neither saint nor devil; and if I heard such talk as that again in St. Omer, I would so shave the speaker’s crown that he should never need razor to his dying day.”

“And what is that to me?” said Gilbert, in an uneasy, half-defiant tone; for Hereward’s tone had been more than half-defiant.

“This. That there are certain broad lands in England, which were my father’s, and are now my nephews’ and my mother’s, and some which should by right be mine. And I advise you, as a friend, not to make entry on those lands, lest Hereward in turn make entry on you. And who is he that will deliver you out of my hand?”