Hereward, the Last of the English by Charles Kingsley (best self help books to read .txt) 📗
- Author: Charles Kingsley
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“O that you would change your mind, much as I honor you for it. O that you would come in to the king, who loves and trusts you, having seen your constancy and faith, proved by so many years of affliction. Great things are open to you, and great joys;—I dare not tell you what: but I know them, if you would come in. You, to waste yourself in the forest, an outlaw and a savage! Opportunity once lost, never returns; time flies fast, Hereward, my friend, and we shall all grow old,—I think at times that I shall soon grow old. And the joys of life will be impossible, and nothing left but vain regrets.”
“Hey?” said Hereward, “a very clerkly letter. I did not think she was so good a scholar. Almost as good a one as Torfrida.”
That was all he said; and as for thinking, he had the posse comitatus of seven counties to think of. But what could those great fortunes and joys be, which Alftruda did not dare to describe?
She growing old, too? Impossible, that was woman’s vanity. It was but two years since she was as fair as a saint in a window. “She shall not marry Ascelin. I will cut his head off. She shall have her own choice for once, poor child.”
And Hereward found himself worked up to a great height of paternal solicitude for Alftruda, and righteous indignation against Ascelin. He did not confess to himself that he disliked much, in his selfish vanity, the notion of Alftruda’s marrying any one at all. He did not want to marry her himself,—of course not. But there is no dog in the manger so churlish on such points as a vain man. There are those who will not willingly let their own sisters, their own daughters, their own servants marry. Why should a woman wish to marry any one but them?
But Hereward, however vain, was no dreamer or sluggard. He set to work, joyfully, cheerfully, scenting battle afar off, like Job’s war-horse, and pawing for the battle. He sent back Alftruda’s messenger, with this answer:—
“Tell your lady that I kiss her hands and feet. That I cannot write, for outlaws carry no pen and ink. But that what she has commanded, that will I perform.”
It is noteworthy, that when Hereward showed Torfrida (which he did frankly) Alftruda’s letter, he did not tell her the exact words of his answer, and stumbled and varied much, vexing her thereby, when she, naturally, wished to hear them word for word.
Then he sent out spies to the four airts of heaven. And his spies, finding a friend and a meal in every hovel, brought home all the news he needed.
He withdrew Torfrida and his men into the heart of the forest,—no hint of the place is given by the chronicler,—cut down trees, formed an abattis of trunks and branches, and awaited the enemy.
CHAPTER XXXV. — HOW ABBOT THOROLD WAS PUT TO RANSOM.
Though Hereward had as yet no feud against “Bysshoppes and Archbysshoppes,” save Egelsin of Selsey, who had excommunicated him, but who was at the other end of England, he had feud, as may be supposed, against Thorold, Abbot of Peterborough, and Thorold feud likewise against him. When Thorold had entered the “Golden Borough,” hoping to fatten himself with all its treasures, he had found it a smoking ruin, and its treasures gone to Ely to pay Sweyn and his Danes. And such a “sacrilege,” especially when he was the loser thereby, was the unpardonable sin itself in the eyes of Thorold, as he hoped it might be in the eyes of St. Peter. Joyfully therefore he joined his friend Ivo Taillebois; when, “with his usual pompous verbosity,” saith Peter of Blois, writing on this very matter, he asked him to join in destroying Hereward.
Nevertheless, with all the Norman chivalry at their back, it behoved them to move with caution; for (so says the chronicler) “Hereward had in these days very many foreigners, as well as landsfolk, who had come to him to practise and learn war, and fled from their masters and friends when they heard of his fame; and some of them the king’s courtiers, who had come to see whether those things which they heard were true, whom Hereward nevertheless received cautiously, on plighted troth and oath.”
So Ivo Taillebois summoned all his men, and all other men’s men who would join him, and rode forth through Spalding and Bourne, having announced to Lucia his bride that he was going to slay her one remaining relative; and when she wept, cursed and kicked her, as he did once a week. After which he came to Thorold of Peterborough.
So on the two worthies rode from Peterborough to Stamford, and from Stamford into the wilderness, no man knows whither.
“And far they rode by bush and shaugh, And far by moss and mire,”—but never found a track of Hereward or his men. And Ivo Taillebois left off boasting how he would burn Torfrida over a slow fire, and confined himself to cursing; and Abbot Thorold left off warbling the song of Roland as if he had been going to a second battle of Hastings, and wished himself in warm bed at Peterborough.
But at the last they struck upon a great horse-track, and followed it at their best pace for several miles, and yet no sign of Hereward.
“Catch an Englishman,” quoth the abbot.
But that was not so easy. The poor folk had hidden themselves, like Israel of old, in thickets and dens and caves of rocks, at the far-off sight of the Norman tyrants, and not a living soul had appeared for twenty miles. At last they caught a ragged wretch herding swine, and haled him up to Ivo.
“Have you seen Hereward, villain?” asked he, through an interpreter.
“Nay.”
“You lie. These are his fresh horse-tracks, and you must have seen him pass.”
“Eh?”
“Thrust out one of his eyes, and he will find his tongue.”
It was done.
“Will you answer now?”
The poor wretch only howled.
“Thrust out the other.”
“No, not that! Mercy: I will tell. He is gone by this four hours. How have you not met him?”
“Fool! The hoofs point onward there.”
“Ay,”—and the fellow could hardly hide a grin,—“but he had shod all his horses backwards.”
A storm of execration followed. They might be thrown twenty miles out of their right road by the stratagem.
“So you had seen Hereward, and would not tell. Put out his other eye,” said Taillebois, as a vent to his own feelings.
And they turned their horses’ heads, and rode back, leaving the
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