Hereward, the Last of the English by Charles Kingsley (best self help books to read .txt) 📗

On a bench at the door of his high-roofed wooden house sat Dirk Hammerhand, the richest man in Walcheren. From within the house sounded the pleasant noise of slave-women, grinding and chatting at the handquern; from without, the pleasant noise of geese and fowls without number. And as he sat and drank his ale, and watched the herd of horses in the fen, he thought himself a happy man, and thanked his Odin and Thor that owing to his princely supplies of horses to Countess Gertrude, Robert the Frison and his Christian Franks had not harried him to the bare walls, as they would probably do ere all was over.

As he looked at the horses, some half-mile off, he saw a strange stir among them. They began whinnying and pawing round a four-footed thing in the midst, which might be a badger, or a wolf,—though both were very uncommon in that pleasant isle of Walcheren; but which plainly had no business there. Whereon he took up a mighty staff, and strode over the fen to see.

He found neither wolf nor badger; but to his exceeding surprise, a long lean man, clothed in ragged horse-skins, whinnying and neighing exactly like a horse, and then stooping to eat grass like one. He advanced to do the first thing which came into his head, namely to break the man’s back with his staff, and ask him afterwards who he might be. But ere he could strike, the man or horse kicked up with his hind legs in his face, and then springing on to the said hind legs ran away with extraordinary swiftness some fifty yards; and then went down on all-fours and began grazing again.

“Beest thou man or devil?” cried Dirk, somewhat frightened.

The thing looked up. The face at least was human.

“Art thou a Christian man?” asked it in bad Frisian, intermixed with snorts and neighs.

“What’s that to thee?” growled Dirk; and began to wish a little that he was one, having heard that the sign of the cross was of great virtue in driving away fiends.

“Thou art not Christian. Thou believest in Thor and Odin? Then there is hope.”

“Hope of what?” Dirk was growing more and more frightened.

“Of her, my sister! Ah, my sister, can it be that I shall find thee at last, after ten thousand miles, and thirty years of woeful wandering?”

“I have no man’s sister here. At least, my wife’s brother was killed—”

“I speak not of a sister in a woman’s shape. Mine, alas!—O woeful prince, O more woeful princess!—eats the herb of the field somewhere in the shape of a mare, as ugly as she was once beautiful, but swifter than the swallow on the wing.”

“I’ve none such here,” quoth Dirk, thoroughly frightened, and glancing uneasily at mare Swallow.

“You have not? Alas, wretched me! It was prophesied to me, by the witch, that I should find her in the field of one who worshipped the old gods; for had she come across a holy priest, she had been a woman again, long ago. Whither must I wander afresh!” And the thing began weeping bitterly, and then ate more grass.

“I—that is—thou poor miserable creature,” said Dirk, half pitying, half wishing to turn the subject, “leave off making a beast of thyself awhile, and tell me who thou art.”

“I have made no beast of myself, most noble Earl of the Frisians, for so you doubtless are. I was made a beast of,—a horse of, by an enchanter of a certain land, and my sister a mare.”

“Thou dost not say so!” quoth Dirk, who considered such an event quite possible.

“I was a prince of the county of Alboronia, which lies between Cathay and the Mountains of the Moon, as fair once as I am foul now, and only less fair than my lost sister; and, by the enchantments of a cruel magician, we became what we are.”

“But thou art not a horse, at all events?”

“Am I not? Thou knowest, then, more of me than I do of myself,”—and it ate more grass. “But hear the rest of my story. My hapless sister was sold away, with me, to a merchant; but I, breaking loose from him, fled until I bathed in a magic fountain. At once I recovered my man’s shape, and was rejoicing therein, when out of the fountain rose a fairy more beautiful than an elf, and smiled upon me with love.

“She asked me my story, and I told it. And when it was told, ‘Wretch!’ she cried, ‘and coward, who hast deserted thy sister in her need. I would have loved thee, and made thee immortal as myself; but now thou shalt wander, ugly, and eating grass, clothed in the horse-hide which has just dropped from thy limbs, till thou shalt find thy sister, and bring her to bathe, like thee, in this magic well.’”

“All good spirits help us! And you are really a prince?”

“As surely,” cried the thing, with a voice of sudden rapture, “as that mare is my sister”; and he rushed at mare Swallow. “I see, I see, my mother’s eyes, my father’s nose—”

“He must have been a chuckle-headed king that, then,” grinned Dirk to himself. “The mare’s nose is as big as a buck-basket. But how can she be a princess, man,—prince, I mean? she has a foal running by her here.”

“A foal?” said the thing, solemnly. “Let me behold it. Alas, alas, my sister! Thy tyrant’s threat has come true, that thou shouldst be his bride whether thou wouldst or not. I see, I see in the features of thy son his hated lineaments.”

“Why he must be as like a horse, then, as your father. But this will not do, Master Horse-man; I know that foal’s pedigree better than I do my own.”

“Man, man, simple, though honest! Hast thou never heard of the skill of the enchanter of the East? How they transform their victims at night back again into human shape, and by day into the shape of beasts again?”

“Yes—well—I know that—”

“And do you not see how you are deluded? Every night, doubt not, that mare and foal take their human shape again; and every night, perhaps, that foul enchanter visits in your fen, perhaps in your very stable, his wretched and perhaps unwilling bride.”

“An enchanter in my stable? That is an ugly guest. But no. I’ve been into the stables fifty times, to see if that mare was safe. Mare was mare, and colt was colt, Mr. Prince, if I have eyes to see.”

“And what are eyes against enchantments? The moment you opened the door, the