Hereward, the Last of the English

On through Windsor Forest, Edward the Saint’s old hunting-ground; its bottoms choked with beech and oak, and birch and alder scrub; its upper lands vast flats of level heath; along the great trackway which runs along the lower side of Chobham Camp, some quarter of a mile broad, every rut and trackway as fresh at this day as when the ancient Briton, finding that his neighbor’s essedum—chariot, or rather cart—had worn the ruts too deep, struck out a fresh wandering line for himself across the dreary heath.

Over the Blackwater by Sandhurst, and along the flats of Hartford Bridge, where the old furze-grown ruts show the track-way to this day. Down into the clayland forests of the Andredsweald, and up out of them again at Basing, on to the clean crisp chalk turf; to strike at Popham Lane the Roman road from Silchester, and hold it over the high downs, till they saw far below them the royal city of Winchester.

Itchen, silver as they looked on her from above, but when they came down to her, so clear that none could see where water ended and where air began, hurried through the city in many a stream. Beyond it rose the “White Camp,”’ the “Venta Belgarum,” the circular earthwork of white chalk on the high down. Within the city rose the ancient minster church, built by Ethelwold,—ancient even then,—where slept the ancient kings; Kennulf, Egbert, and Ethelwulf the Saxons; and by them the Danes, Canute the Great, and Hardicanute his son, and Norman Emma his wife, and Ethelred’s before him; and the great Earl Godwin, who seemed to Hereward to have died, not twenty, but two hundred years ago;—and it may be an old Saxon hall upon the little isle whither Edgar had bidden bring the heads of all the wolves in Wessex, where afterwards the bishops built Wolvesey Palace. But nearer to them, on the down which sloped up to the west, stood an uglier thing, which they saw with curses deep and loud,—the keep of the new Norman castle by the west gate.

Hereward halted his knights upon the down outside the northern gate. Then he rode forward himself. The gate was open wide; but he did not care to go in.

So he rode into the gateway, and smote upon that gate with his lance-but. But the porter saw the knights upon the down, and was afraid to come out; for he feared treason.

Then Hereward smote a second time; but the porter did not come out.

Then he took the lance by the shaft, and smote a third time. And he smote so hard, that the lance-but flew to flinders against Winchester Gate.

And at that started out two knights, who had come down from the castle, seeing the meinie on the down, and asked,—

“Who art thou who knockest here so bold?”

“Who I am any man can see by those splinters, if he knows what men are left in England this day.”

The knights looked at the broken wood, and then at each other. Who could the man be who could beat an ash stave to flinders at a single blow?

“You are young, and do not know me; and no shame to you. Go and tell William the King, that Hereward is come to put his hands between the King’s, and be the King’s man henceforth.”

“You are Hereward?” asked one, half awed, half disbelieving at Hereward’s short stature.

“You are—I know not who. Pick up those splinters, and take them to King William; and say, ‘The man who broke that lance against the gate is here to make his peace with thee,’ and he will know who I am.”

And so cowed were these two knights with Hereward’s royal voice, and royal eye, and royal strength, that they went simply, and did what he bade them.

And when King William saw the splinters, he was as joyful as man could be, and said,—

“Send him to me, and tell him, Bright shines the sun to me that lights Hereward into Winchester.”

“But, Lord King, he has with him a meinie of full forty knights.”

“So much the better. I shall have the more valiant Englishmen to help my valiant French.”

So Hereward rode round, outside the walls, to William’s new entrenched palace, outside the west gate, by the castle.

And then Hereward went in, and knelt before the Norman, and put his hands between William’s hands, and swore to be his man.

“I have kept my word,” said he, “which I sent to thee at Rouen seven years agone. Thou art King of all England; and I am the last man to say so.”

“And since thou hast said it, I am King indeed. Come with me, and dine; and to-morrow I will see thy knights.”

And William walked out of the hall leaning on Hereward’s shoulder, at which all the Normans gnashed their teeth with envy.

“And for my knights, Lord King? Thine and mine will mix, for a while yet, like oil and water; and I fear lest there be murder done between them.”

“Likely enough.”

So the knights were bestowed in a “vill” near by; “and the next day the venerable king himself went forth to see those knights, and caused them to stand, and march before him, both with arms, and without. With whom being much delighted, he praised them, congratulating them on their beauty and stature, and saying that they must all be knights of fame in war.” After which Hereward sent them all home except two; and waited till he should marry Alftruda, and get back his heritage.

“And when that happens,” said William, “why should we not have two weddings, beausire, as well as one? I hear that you have in Crowland a fair daughter, and marriageable.”

Hereward bowed.

“And I have found a husband for her suitable to her years, and who may conduce to your peace and serenity.”

Hereward bit his lip. To refuse was impossible in those days. But—

“I trust that your Grace has found a knight of higher lineage than him, whom, after so many honors, you honored with the hand of my niece.”

William laughed. It was not his interest to quarrel with Hereward. “Aha! Ivo, the wood-cutter’s son. I ask your pardon for that, Sir Hereward. Had you been my man then, as you are now, it might have been different.”

“If a king ask my pardon, I can only ask his in return.”

“You must be friends with Taillebois. He is a brave knight, and a wise warrior.”

“None ever doubted that.”

“And to cover any little blots in his escutcheon, I have made him an earl, as I may make you some day.”

“Your Majesty, like a true king, knows how to reward. Who is this knight whom you have chosen for my lass?”

“Sir Hugh of Evermue, a neighbor of yours, and a man of blood and breeding.”

“I know him, and his lineage; and it is very well. I humbly thank your Majesty.”

“Can I be the same man?” said Hereward to himself, bitterly.

And he was not the same man. He was besotted on Alftruda, and humbled himself accordingly.

CHAPTER XXXIX. – HOW TORFRIDA CONFESSED THAT SHE HAD BEEN INSPIRED BY THE DEVIL

After a few days, there came down a priest to Crowland, and talked with Torfrida, in Archbishop Lanfranc’s name.

Whether Lanfranc sent him, or merely (as is probable) Alftruda, he could not have come in a more fit name. Torfrida knew (with all the world) how Lanfranc had arranged William the Norman’s uncanonical marriage, with the Pope, by help of Archdeacon Hildebrand (afterwards Pope himself); and had changed his mind deftly to William’s side when he saw that William might be useful to Holy Church, and could enslave, if duly managed, not only the nation of England to himself, but the clergy of England to Rome. All this Torfrida, and the world, knew. And therefore she answered:—

“Lanfranc? I can hardly credit you: for I hear that he is a good man, though hard. But he has settled a queen’s marriage suit; so he may very well settle mine.”

After which they talked together; and she answered him, the priest said, so wisely and well, that he never had met with a woman of so clear a brain, or of so stout a heart.

At last, being puzzled to get that which he wanted, he touched on the matter of her marriage with Hereward.

She wished it, he said, dissolved. She wished herself to enter religion.

Archbishop Lanfranc would be most happy to sanction so holy a desire, but there were objections. She was a married woman; and her husband had not given his consent.

“Let him give it, then.”

“There were still objections. He had nothing to bring against her, which could justify the dissolution of the holy bond: unless—”

“Unless I bring some myself?”

“There have been rumors—I say not how true—of magic and sorcery!—”

Torfrida leaped up from her seat, and laughed such a laugh, that the priest said in after years, it rung through his head as if it had arisen out of the pit of the lost.

“So that is what you want, Churchman! Then you shall have it. Bring me pen and ink. I need not to confess to you. You shall read my confession when it is done. I am a better scribe, mind you, than any clerk between here and Paris.”

She seized the pen and ink, and wrote; not fiercely, as the priest expected, but slowly and carefully. Then she gave it the priest to read.

“Will that do, Churchman? Will that free my soul, and that of your French Archbishop?”

And the priest read to himself.

How Torfrida of St. Omer, born at Aries in Provence, confest that from her youth up she had been given to the practice of diabolic arts, and had at divers times and places used the same, both alone and with Richilda, late Countess of Hainault. How, wickedly, wantonly, and instinct with a malignant spirit, she had compassed, by charms and spells, to win the love of Hereward. How she had ever since kept in bondage him, and others whom she had not loved with the same carnal love, but only desired to make them useful to her own desire of power and glory, by the same magical arts; for which she now humbly begged pardon of Holy Church, and of all Christian folk; and, penetrated with compunction, desired only that she might retire into the convent of Crowland. She asserted the marriage which she had so unlawfully compassed to be null and void; and prayed to be released therefrom, as a burden to her conscience and soul, that she might spend the rest of her life in penitence for her many enormous sins. She submitted herself to the judgment of Holy Church, only begging that this her free confession might be counted in her favor and that she might not be put to death, as she deserved, nor sent into perpetual imprisonment; because her mother-in-law according to the flesh, the Countess Godiva, being old and infirm, had daily need of her; and she wished to serve her menially as long as she lived. After which, she put herself utterly upon the judgment of the Church. And meanwhile, she desired and prayed that she might be allowed to remain at large in the said monastery of Crowland, not leaving the precincts thereof, without special leave given by the Abbot and prioress in one case between her and them reserved; to wear garments of hair-cloth; to fast all the year on bread and water; and to be disciplined with rods or otherwise, at such times as the prioress should command, and to such degree as her body, softened with carnal luxury, could reasonably endure. And beyond—that, being dead to the world, God might have mercy on her soul.

And she meant what she said. The madness of remorse and disappointment, so common in the wild middle age, had come over her; and with it the twin madness of self-torture.

The priest read, and trembled; not for Torfrida: but for himself, lest she should enchant him after all.

“She must have been an awful sinner,” said he to the monks when he got safe out of the room; “comparable only to the witch of Endor, or the woman Jezebel, of whom St. John writes in the Revelations.”

“I do not know how you Frenchmen measure folks, when you see them; but to our mind she is,—for goodness, humility, and patience comparable only to an angel of God,” said Abbot Ulfketyl.

“You Englishmen will have to change your minds on many points, if you mean to stay here.”

“We shall not change them, and we shall stay here,” quoth the Abbot.

“How? You will not get Sweyn and his Danes to help you a second time.”

“No, we shall all die, and give you your wills, and you will not have the heart to cast our bones into the fens?”

“Not unless you intend to work miracles, and set up for saints, like your Alphege Edmund.”

“Heaven forbid that we should compare ourselves with them! Only let us alone till we die.”

“If you let us alone, and do not turn traitor meanwhile.”

Abbot Ulfketyl bit his lip, and kept down the rising fiend.

“And now,” said the priest, “deliver me over Torfrida the younger, daughter of Hereward and this woman, that I may take her to the King, who has found a fit husband for her.”

“You will hardly get her.”

“Not get her?”

“Not without her mother’s consent. The lass cares for naught but her.”

“Pish! that sorceress? Send for the girl.”

Abbot Ulfketyl, forced in his own abbey, great and august lord though he was, to obey any upstart of a Norman priest who came backed by the King and Lanfranc, sent for the lass.

The young outlaw came in,—hawk on fist, and its hood off, for it was a pet,—short, sturdy, upright, brown-haired, blue-eyed, ill-dressed, with hard hands and sun-burnt face, but with the hawk-eye of her father and her mother, and the hawks among which she was bred. She looked the priest over from head to foot, till he was abashed.

“A Frenchman!” said she, and she said no more.

The priest looked at her eyes, and then at the hawk’s eyes. They were disagreeably like each other. He told his errand as courteously as he could, for he was not a bad-hearted man for a Norman priest.

The lass laughed him to scorn. The King’s commands? She never saw a king in the greenwood, and cared for none. There was no king in England now, since Sweyn Ulfsson sailed back to Denmark. Who was this Norman William, to sell a free English lass like a colt or a cow? The priest might go back to the slaves of Wessex, and command them if he could; but in the fens, men were free, and lasses too.

The priest was piously shocked and indignant; and began to argue.

She played with her hawk, instead of listening, and then was marching out of the room.

“Your mother,” said he, “is a sorceress.”

“You are a knave, or set on by knaves. You lie, and you know you lie.” And she turned away again.

“She has confessed it.”

“You have driven her mad between you, till she will confess anything. I presume you threatened to burn her, as some of you did awhile back.” And the young lady made use of words equally strong and true.

The priest was not accustomed to the direct language of the greenwood, and indignant on his own account, threatened, and finally offered to use, force. Whereon there looked up into his face such a demon (so he said) as he never had seen or dreamed of, and said:

“If you lay a finger on me, I will brittle you like any deer.” And therewith pulled out a saying-knife, about half as long again as the said priest’s hand, being very sharp, so he deposed, down the whole length of one edge, and likewise down his little finger’s length of the other.

Not being versed in the terms of English venery, he asked Abbot Ulfketyl what brittling of a deer might mean; and being informed that it was that operation on the carcass of a stag which his countrymen called eventrer, and Highland gillies now “gralloching,” he subsided, and thought it best to go and consult the young lady’s mother.

She, to his astonishment, submitted at once and utterly. The King, and he whom she had called her husband, were very gracious. It was all well. She would have preferred, and the Lady Godiva too, after their experience of the world and the flesh, to have devoted her daughter to Heaven in the minster there. But she was unworthy. Who was she, to train a bride for Him who died on Cross? She accepted this as part of her penance, with thankfulness and humility. She had heard that Sir Hugh of Evermue was a gentleman of ancient birth and good prowess, and she thanked the King for his choice. Let the priest tell her daughter that she commanded her to go with him to Winchester. She did not wish to see her. She was stained with many crimes, and unworthy to approach a pure maiden. Besides, it would only cause misery and tears. She was trying to die to the world and to the flesh; and she did not wish to reawaken their power within her. Yes. It was very well. “Let the lass go with him.”

“Thou art indeed a true penitent,” said the priest, his human heart softening him.

“Thou art very much mistaken,” said she, and turned away.

The girl, when she heard her mother’s command, wept, shrieked, and went. At least she was going to her father. And from wholesome fear of that same saying-knife, the priest left her in peace all the way to Winchester.

After which, Abbot Ulfketyl went into his lodgings, and burst, like a noble old nobleman as he was, into bitter tears of rage and shame.

But Torfrida’s eyes were as dry as her own sackcloth.

The priest took the letter back to Winchester, and showed it—it may be to Archbishop Lanfranc. But what he said, this chronicler would not dare to say. For he was a very wise man, and a very stanch and strong pillar of the Holy Roman Church. Meanwhile, he was man enough not to require that anything should be added to Torfrida’s penance; and that was enough to prove him a man in those days,—at least for a churchman,—as it proved Archbishop or St. Ailred to be, a few years after, in the case of the nun of Watton, to be read in Gale’s “Scriptores Anglicaniae.” Then he showed the letter to Alftruda.

And she laughed one of her laughs, and said, “I have her at last!”

Then, as it befell, he was forced to shew the letter to Queen Matilda; and she wept over it human tears, such as she, the noble heart, had been forced to keep many a time before, and said, “The poor soul!—You, Alftruda, woman! does Hereward know of this?”

“No, madam,” said Alftruda, not adding that she had taken good care that he should not know.

“It is the best thing which I have heard of him. I should tell him, were it not that I must not meddle with my lord’s plans. God grant him a good delivery, as they say of the poor souls in jail. Well, madam, you have your will at last. God give you grace thereof, for you have not given Him much chance as yet.”

“Your majesty will honor us by coming to the wedding?” asked Alftruda, utterly unabashed.

Matilda the good looked at her with a face of such calm, childlike astonishment, that Alftruda dropped her “fairy neck” at last, and slunk out of the presence like a beaten cur.

William went to the wedding; and swore horrible oaths that they were the handsomest pair he had ever seen. And so Hereward married Alftruda. How Holy Church settled the matter is not said. But that Hereward married Alftruda, under these very circumstances, may be considered a “historic fact,” being vouched for by Gaimar, and by the Peterborough Chronicler. And doubtless Holy Church contrived that it should happen without sin, if it conduced to her own interest.

And little Torfrida—then, it seems, some sixteen years of age—was married to Hugh of Evermue. She wept and struggled as she was dragged into the church.

“But I do not want to be married. I want to go back to my mother.”

“The diabolic instinct may have descended to her,” said the priests, “and attracts her to the sorceress. We had best sprinkle her with holy water.”

So they sprinkled her with holy water, and used exorcisms. Indeed, the case being an important one, the personages of rank, they brought out from their treasures the apron of a certain virgin saint, and put it round her neck, in hopes of driving out the hereditary fiend.

“If I am led with a halter, I must needs go,” said she, with one of her mother’s own flashes of wit, and went. “But Lady Alftruda,” whispered she, half-way up the church, “I never loved him.”

“Behave yourself before the King, or I will whip you till the blood runs.”

And so she would, and no one would have wondered in those days.

“I will murder you if you do. But I never even saw him.”

“Little fool! And what are you going through, but what I went through before you?”

“You to say that?” gnashed the girl, as another spark of her mother’s came out. “And you gaining what—”

“What I waited for for fifteen years,” said Alftruda, coolly. “If you have courage and cunning, like me, to wait for fifteen years, you too may have your will likewise.”

The pure child shuddered, and was married to Hugh of Evermue, who is not said to have kicked her; and was, according to them of Crowland, a good friend to their monastery, and therefore, doubtless, a good man. Once, says wicked report, he offered to strike her, as was the fashion in those chivalrous days. Whereon she turned upon him like a tigress, and bidding him remember that she was the daughter of Hereward and Torfrida, gave him such a beating that he, not wishing to draw sword upon her, surrendered at discretion; and they lived all their lives afterwards as happily as most other married people in those times.

CHAPTER XL. – HOW HEREWARD BEGAN TO GET HIS SOUL’S PRICE

And now behold Hereward at home again, fat with the wages of sin, and not knowing that they are death.

He is once more “Dominus de Brunune cum Marisco,” (Lord of Bourne with the fen), “with all returns and liberties and all other things adjacent to the same vill which are now held as a barony from the Lord King of England.” He has a fair young wife, and with her farms and manors, even richer than his own. He is still young, hearty, wise by experience, high in the king’s favor, and deservedly so.

Why should he not begin life again?

Why not? Unless it be true that the wages of sin are, not a new life, but death.

And yet he has his troubles. Hardly a Norman knight or baron round but has a blood-feud against him, for a kinsman slain. Sir Aswart, Thorold the abbot’s man, was not likely to forgive him for turning him out of the three Mainthorpe manors, which he had comfortably held for two years past, and sending him back to lounge in the abbot’s hall at Peterborough, without a yard of land he could call his own. Sir Ascelin was not likely to forgive him for marrying Alftruda, whom he had intended to marry himself. Ivo Taillebois was not likely to forgive him for existing within a hundred miles of Spalding, any more than the wolf would forgive the lamb for fouling the water below him. Beside, had he (Ivo) not married Hereward’s niece? and what more grievous offence could Hereward commit, than to be her uncle, reminding Ivo of his own low birth by his nobility, and too likely to take Lucia’s part, whenever it should please Ivo to beat or kick her? Only “Gilbert of Ghent,” the pious and illustrious earl, sent messages of congratulation and friendship to Hereward, it being his custom to sail with the wind, and worship the rising sun—till it should decline again.

But more: hardly one of the Normans round, but, in the conceit of their skin-deep yesterday’s civilization, look on Hereward as a barbarian Englishman, who has his throat tattooed, and wears a short coat, and prefers—the churl—to talk English in his own hall, though he can talk as good French as they when he is with them, beside three or four barbarian tongues if he has need.

But more still: if they are not likely to bestow their love on Hereward, Hereward is not likely to win love from them of his own will. He is peevish, and wrathful, often insolent and quarrelsome; and small blame to him. The Normans are invaders and tyrants, who have no business there, and should not be there, if he had his way. And they and he can no more amalgamate than fire and water. Moreover, he is a very great man, or has been such once, and he thinks himself one still. He has been accustomed to command men, whole armies; and he will no more treat these Normans as his equals, than they will treat him as such. His own son-in-law, Hugh of Evermue, has to take hard words,—thoroughly well deserved, it may be; but all the more unpleasant for that reason.

The truth was, that Hereward’s heart was gnawed with shame and remorse; and therefore he fancied, and not without reason, that all men pointed at him the finger of scorn.

He had done a bad, base, accursed deed. And he knew it. Once in his life—for his other sins were but the sins of his age—the Father of men seems (if the chroniclers say truth) to have put before this splendid barbarian good and evil, saying, Choose! And he knew that the evil was evil, and chose it nevertheless.