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

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