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