Hereward, the Last of the English by Charles Kingsley (best self help books to read .txt) 📗
- Author: Charles Kingsley
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“Thy men had run, of course.”
“They were every one dead or wounded, save Richard; and he was fighting single-handed with an Englishman, while the other six stood around, and looked on.”
“Then they fought fairly?” said William.
“As fairly, to do them justice, as if they had been Frenchmen, and not English churls. As we came down along the dike, a little man of them steps between the two, and strikes down their swords as if they had been two reeds. ‘Come!’ cries he, ‘enough of this. You are two prudhommes well matched, and you can fight out this any other day’; and away he and his men go down the dike-end to the water.”
“Leaving Richard safe?”
“Wounded a little,—but safe enough.”
“And then?”
“We followed them to the boat as hard as we could; killed one with a javelin, and caught another.”
“Knightly done!” and William swore an awful oath, “and worthy of valiant Frenchmen. These English set you the example of chivalry by letting your comrade fight his own battle fairly, instead of setting on him all together; and you repay them by hunting them down with darts, because you dare not go within sword’s-stroke of better men than yourselves. Go. I am ashamed of you. No, stay. Where is your prisoner? For, Splendeur Dex! I will send him back safe and sound in return for Dade, to tell the knights of Ely that if they know so well the courtesies of war, William of Rouen does too.”
“The prisoner, Sire,” quoth the knight, trembling, “is—is—”
“You have not murdered him?”
“Heaven forbid! but—”
“He broke his bonds and escaped?”
“Gnawed them through, Sire, as we suppose, and escaped through the mire in the dark, after the fashion of these accursed frogs of Girvians.”
“But did he tell you naught ere he bade you good morning?”
“He told as the names of all the seven. He that beat down the swords was Hereward himself.”
“I thought as much. When shall I have that fellow at my side?”
“He that fought Richard was one Wenoch.”
“I have heard of him.”
“He that we slew was Siward, a monk.”
“More shame to you.”
“He that we took was Azer the Hardy, a monk of Nicole—Licole,”—the Normans could never say Lincoln.
“And the rest were Thurstan the Younger; Leofric the Deacon, Hereward’s minstrel; and Boter, the traitor monk of St. Edmund’s.”
“And if I catch them,” quoth William, “I will make an abbot of every one of them.”
“Sire?” quoth the chaplain, in a deprecating tone.
CHAPTER XXX. — HOW HEREWARD PLAYED THE POTTER; AND HOW HE CHEATED THE KING.
They of Ely were now much straitened, being shut in both by land and water; and what was to be done, either by themselves or by the king, they knew not. Would William simply starve them; or at least inflict on them so perpetual a Lent,—for of fish there could be no lack, even if they ate or drove away all the fowl,—as would tame down their proud spirits; which a diet of fish and vegetables, from some ludicrous theory of monastic physicians, was supposed to do? [Footnote: The Cornish—the stoutest, tallest, and most prolific race of the South—live on hardly anything else but fish and vegetables.] Or was he gathering vast armies, from they knew not whence, to try, once and for all, another assault on the island,—it might be from several points at once?
They must send out a spy, and find out news from the outer world, if news were to be gotten. But who would go?
So asked the bishop, and the abbot, and the earls, in council in the abbot’s lodging.
Torfrida was among them. She was always among them now. She was their Alruna-wife, their Vala, their wise woman, whose counsels all received as more than human.
“I will go,” said she, rising up like a goddess on Olympus. “I will cut off my hair, and put on boy’s clothes, and smirch myself brown with walnut leaves; and I will go. I can talk their French tongue. I know their French ways; and as for a story to cover my journey and my doings, trust a woman’s wit to invent that.”
They looked at her, with delight in her courage, but with doubt.
“If William’s French grooms got hold of you, Torfrida, it would not be a little walnut brown which would hide you,” said Hereward. “It is like you to offer,—worthy of you, who have no peer.”
“That she has not,” quoth churchmen and soldiers alike.
“But—to send you would be to send Hereward’s wrong half. The right half of Hereward is going; and that is, himself.”
“Uncle, uncle!” said the young earls, “send Winter, Geri, Leofwin Prat, any of your fellows: but not yourself. If we lose you, we lose our head and our king.”
And all prayed Hereward to let any man go, rather than himself.
“I am going, lords and knights; and what Hereward says he does. It is one day to Brandon. It may be two days back; for if I miscarry,—as I most likely shall,—I must come home round about. On the fourth day, you shall hear of me or from me. Come with me, Torfrida.”
And he strode out.
He cropped his golden locks, he cropped his golden beard; and Torfrida cried, as she cropped them, half with fear for him, half for sorrow over his shorn glories.
“I am no Samson, my lady; my strength lieth not in my locks. Now for some rascal’s clothes,—as little dirty as you can get me, for fear of company.”
And Hereward put on filthy garments, and taking mare Swallow with him, got into a barge and went across the river to Soham.
He could not go down the Great Ouse, and up the Little Ouse, which was his easiest way, for the French held all the river below the isle; and, beside, to have come straight from Ely might cause suspicion. So he went down to Fordham, and crossed the Lark at Mildenhall; and just before he got to Mildenhall, he met a potter carrying pots upon a pony.
“Halt, my stout fellow,” quoth he, “and put thy pots on my mare’s back.”
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