Kitabı oku: «Hereward, the Last of the English», sayfa 13
CHAPTER XVI. – HOW HEREWARD WAS ASKED TO SLAY AN OLD COMRADE
In those days Hereward went into Bruges, to Marquis Baldwin, about his business. And as he walked in Bruges street, he met an old friend, Gilbert of Ghent.
He had grown somewhat stouter, and somewhat grayer, in the last ten years: but he was as hearty as ever; and as honest, according to his own notions of honesty.
He shook Hereward by both hands, clapt him on the back, swore with many oaths, that he had heard of his fame in all lands, that he always said that he would turn out a champion and a gallant knight, and had said it long before he killed the bear. As for killing it, it was no more than he expected, and nothing to what Hereward had done since, and would do yet.
Wherefrom Hereward opined that Gilbert had need of him.
They chatted on: Hereward asking after old friends, and sometimes after old foes, whom he had long since forgiven; for though he always avenged an injury, he never bore malice for one; a distinction less common now than then, when a man’s honor, as well as his safety, depended on his striking again, when he was struck.
“And how is little Alftruda? Big she must be now?” asked he at last.
“The fiend fly away with her,—or rather, would that he had flown away with her, before ever I saw the troublesome little jade. Big? She is grown into the most beautiful lass that ever was seen,—which is, what a young fellow like you cares for; and more trouble to me than all my money, which is what an old fellow like me cares for. It is partly about her that I am over here now. Fool that I was, ever to let an Etheliza [Footnote: A princess of the royal blood of Cerdic, and therefore of Edward the Confessor.] into my house”; and Gilbert swore a great deal.
“How was she an Etheliza?” asked Hereward, who cared nothing about the matter. “And how came she into your house? I never could understand that, any more than how the bear came there.”
“Ah! As to the bear, I have my secrets, which I tell no one. He is dead and buried, thanks to you.”
“And I sleep on his skin every night.”
“You do, my little Champion? Well, warm is the bed that is well earned. But as for her;—see here, and I’ll tell you. She was Gospatrick’s ward and kinswoman,—how, I do not rightly know. But this I know, that she comes from Uchtred, the earl whom Canute slew, and that she is heir to great estates in Northumberland.
“Gospatrick, that fought at Dunsinane?”
“Yes, not the old Thane, his uncle, whom Tosti has murdered; but Gospatrick, King Malcolm’s cousin, Dolfin’s father. Well, she was his ward. He gave me her to keep, for he wanted her out of harm’s way—the lass having a bonny dower, lands and money—till he could marry her up to one of his sons. I took her; of course I was not going to do other men’s work for naught; so I would have married her up to my poor boy, if he had but lived. But he would not live, as you know. Then I would have married her to you, and made you my heir, I tell you honestly, if you had not flown off, like a hot-headed young springald, as you were then.”
“You were very kind. But how is she an Etheliza?”
“Etheliza? Twice over. Her father was of high blood among those Saxons; and if not, are not all the Gospatricks Ethelings? Their grandmother, Uchtred’s wife, was Ethelred, Evil-Counsel’s daughter, King Edward of London’s sister; and I have heard that this girl’s grandfather was their son,—but died young,—or was killed with his father. Who cares?”
“Not I,” quoth Hereward.
“Well—he wants to marry her to Dolfin, his eldest son.”
“Why, Dolfin had a wife when I was at Dunsinane.”
“But she is dead since, and young Ulf, her son, murdered by Tosti last winter.”
“I know.”
“Whereon Gospatrick sends to me for the girl and her dowry. What was I to do? Give her up? Little it is, lad, that I ever gave up, after I had it once in my grip, or I should be a poorer man than I am now. Have and hold, is my rule. What should I do? What I did. I was coming hither on business of my own, so I put her on board ship, and half her dower,—where the other half is, I know; and man must draw me with wild horses, before he finds out;—and came here to my kinsman, Baldwin, to see if he had any proper young fellow to whom we might marry the lass, and so go shares in her money and the family connection. Could a man do more wisely?”
“Impossible,” quoth Hereward.
“But see how a wise man is lost by fortune. When I come here, whom should I find but Dolfin himself? The dog had scent of my plan, all the way from Dolfinston there, by Peebles. He hunts me out, the hungry Scotch wolf; rides for Leith, takes ship, and is here to meet me, having accused me before Baldwin as a robber and ravisher, and offers to prove his right to the jade on my body in single combat.”
“The villain!” quoth Hereward. “There is no modesty left on earth, nor prudence either. To come here, where he might have stumbled on Tosti, who murdered his son, and I would surely do the like by him, himself. Lucky for him that Tosti is off to Norway on his own errand.”
“Modesty and prudence? None now-a-days, young sire; nor justice either, I think; for when Baldwin hears us both—and I told my story as cannily as I could—he tells me that he is very sorry for an old vassal and kinsman, and so forth,—but I must either disgorge or fight.”
“Then fight,” quoth Hereward.
“‘Per se aut per campioneem,’—that’s the old law, you know.”
“Not a doubt of it.”
“Look you, Hereward. I am no coward, nor a clumsy man of my hands.”
“He is either fool or liar who says so.”
“But see. I find it hard work to hold my own in Scotland now. Folks don’t like me, or trust me; I can’t say why.”
“How unreasonable!” quoth Hereward.
“And if I kill this youth, and so have a blood-feud with Gospatrick, I have a hornet’s nest about my ears. Not only he and his sons,—who are masters of Scotch Northumberland, [Footnote: Between Tweed and Forth.]—but all his cousins; King Malcolm, and Donaldbain, and, for aught I know, Harold and the Godwinssons, if he bid them take up the quarrel. And beside, that Dolfin is a big man. If you cross Scot and Saxon, you breed a very big man. If you cross again with a Dane or a Norseman, you breed a giant. His grandfather was a Scots prince, his grandmother an English Etheliza, his mother a Norse princess, as you know,—and how big he is, you should remember. He weighs half as much again as I, and twice as much as you.”
“Butchers count by weight, and knights by courage,” quoth Hereward.
“Very well for you, who are young and active; but I take him to be a better man than that ogre of Cornwall, whom they say you killed.”
“What care I? Let him be twice as good, I’d try him.”
“Ah! I knew you were the old Hereward still. Now hearken to me. Be my champion. You owe me a service, lad. Fight that man, challenge him in open field. Kill him, as you are sure to do. Claim the lass, and win her,—and then we will part her dower. And (though it is little that I care for young lasses’ fancies), to tell you truth, she never favored any man but you.”
Hereward started at the snare which had been laid for him; and then fell into a very great laughter.
“My most dear and generous host: you are the wiser, the older you grow. A plan worthy of Solomon! You are rid of Sieur Dolfin without any blame to yourself.”
“Just so.”
“While I win the lass, and, living here in Flanders, am tolerably safe from any blood-feud of the Gospatricks.”
“Just so.”
“Perfect: but there is only one small hindrance to the plan; and that is—that I am married already.”
Gilbert stopped short, and swore a great oath.
“But,” he said, after a while, “does that matter so much after all?”
“Very little, indeed, as all the world knows, if one has money enough, and power enough.”
“And you have both,” they say.
“But, still more unhappily, my money is my wife’s.”
“Peste!”
“And more unhappily still, I am so foolishly fond of her, that I would sooner have her in her smock, than any other woman with half England for a dower.”
“Then I suppose I must look out for another champion.”
“Or save yourself the trouble, by being—just as a change—an honest man.”
“I believe you are right,” said Gilbert, laughing; “but it is hard to begin so late in life.”
“And after one has had so little practice.”
“Aha! Thou art the same merry dog of a Hereward. Come along. But could we not poison this Dolfin, after all?”
To which proposal Hereward gave no encouragement.
“And now, my très beausire, may I ask you, in return, what business brings you to Flanders?”
“Have I not told you?”
“No, but I have guessed. Gilbert of Ghent is on his way to William of Normandy.”
“Well. Why not?”
“Why not?—certainly. And has brought out of Scotland a few gallant gentlemen, and stout housecarles of my acquaintance.”
Gilbert laughed.
“You may well say that. To tell you the truth, we have flitted, bag and baggage. I don’t believe that we have left a dog behind.”
“So you intend to ‘colonize’ in England, as the learned clerks would call it? To settle; to own land; and enter, like the Jews of old, into goodly houses which you builded not, farms which you tilled not, wells which you digged not, and orchards which you planted not?”
“Why, what a clerk you are! That sounds like Scripture.”
“And so it is. I heard it in a French priest’s sermon, which he preached here in St. Omer a Sunday or two back, exhorting all good Catholics, in the Pope’s name, to enter upon the barbarous land of England, tainted with the sin of Simon Magus, and expel thence the heretical priests, and so forth, promising them that they should have free leave to cut long thongs out of other men’s hides.”
Gilbert chuckled.
“You laugh. The priest did not; for after sermon I went up to him, and told him how I was an Englishman, and an outlaw, and a desperate man, who feared neither saint nor devil; and if I heard such talk as that again in St. Omer, I would so shave the speaker’s crown that he should never need razor to his dying day.”
“And what is that to me?” said Gilbert, in an uneasy, half-defiant tone; for Hereward’s tone had been more than half-defiant.
“This. That there are certain broad lands in England, which were my father’s, and are now my nephews’ and my mother’s, and some which should by right be mine. And I advise you, as a friend, not to make entry on those lands, lest Hereward in turn make entry on you. And who is he that will deliver you out of my hand?”
“God and his Saints alone, thou fiend out of the pit!” quoth Gilbert, laughing. But he was growing warm, and began to tutoyer Hereward.
“I am in earnest, Gilbert of Ghent, my good friend of old time.”
“I know thee well enough, man. Why in the name of all glory and plunder art thou not coming with us? They say William has offered thee the earldom of Northumberland.”
“He has not. And if he has, it is not his to give. And if it were, it is by right neither mine nor my nephews’, but Waltheof Siwardsson’s. Now hearken unto me; and settle it in your mind, thou and William both, that your quarrel is against none but Harold and the Godwinssons, and their men of Wessex; but that if you go to cross the Watling street, and meddle with the free Danes, who are none of Harold’s men—”
“Stay. Harold has large manors in Lincolnshire, and so has Edith his sister; and what of them, Sir Hereward?”
“That the man who touches them, even though the men on them may fight on Harold’s side, had better have put his head into a hornet’s nest. Unjustly were they seized from their true owners by Harold and his fathers; and the holders of them will owe no service to him a day longer than they can help; but will, if he fall, demand an earl of their own race, or fight to the death.”
“Best make young Waltheof earl, then.”
“Best keep thy foot out of them, and the foot of any man for whom thou carest. Now, good by. Friends we are, and friends let us be.”
“Ah, that thou wert coming to England!”
“I bide my time. Come I may, when I see fit. But whether I come as friend or foe depends on that of which I have given thee fair warning.”
So they parted for the time.
It will be seen hereafter how Gilbert took his own advice about young Waltheof, but did not take Hereward’s advice about the Lincoln manors.
In Baldwin’s hall that day Hereward met Dolfin; and when the magnificent young Scot sprang to him, embraced him, talked over old passages, complimented him on his fame, lamented that he himself had won no such honors in the field, Hereward felt much more inclined to fight for him than against him.
Presently the ladies entered from the bower inside the hall. A buzz of expectation rose from all the knights, and Alftruda’s name was whispered round.
She came in, and Hereward saw at the first glance that Gilbert had for once in his life spoken truth. So beautiful a girl he had never beheld; and as she swept down toward him he for one moment forgot Torfrida, and stood spell-bound like the rest.
Her eye caught his. If his face showed recognition, hers showed none. The remembrance of their early friendship, of her deliverance from the monster, had plainly passed away.
“Fickle, ungrateful things, these women,” thought Hereward,
She passed him close. And as she did so, she turned her head and looked him full in the face one moment, haughty and cold.
“So you could not wait for me?” said she, in a quiet whisper, and went on straight to Dolfin, who stood trembling with expectation and delight.
She put her hand into his.
“Here stands my champion,” said she.
“Say, here kneels your slave,” cried the Scot, dropping to the pavement a true Highland knee. Whereon forth shrieked a bagpipe, and Dolfin’s minstrel sang, in most melodious Gaelic,—
“Strong as a horse’s hock,
shaggy as a stag’s brisket,
Is the knee of the young torrent-leaper,
the pride of the house of Crinan.
It bent not to Macbeth the accursed,
it bends not even to Malcolm the Anointed,
But it bends like a harebell—who shall blame it?—
before the breath of beauty.”
Which magnificent effusion being interpreted by Hereward for the instruction of the ladies, procured for the red-headed bard more than one handsome gift.
A sturdy voice arose out of the crowd.
“The fair lady, my Lord Count, and knights all, will need no champion as far as I am concerned. When one sees so fair a pair together, what can a knight say, in the name of all knighthood, but that the heavens have made them for each other, and that it were sin and shame to sunder them?”
The voice was that of Gilbert of Ghent, who, making a virtue of necessity, walked up to the pair, his weather-beaten countenance wreathed into what were meant for paternal smiles.
“Why did you not say as much in Scotland, and save me all this trouble?” pertinently asked the plain-spoken Scot.
“My lord prince, you owe me a debt for my caution. Without it, the poor lady had never known the whole fervency of your love; or these noble knights and yourself the whole evenness of Count Baldwin’s justice.”
Alftruda turned her head away half contemptuously; and as she did so, she let her hand drop listlessly from Dolfin’s grasp, and drew back to the other ladies.
A suspicion crossed Hereward’s mind. Did she really love the Prince? Did those strange words of hers mean that she had not yet forgotten Hereward himself?
However, he said to himself that it was no concern of his, as it certainly was not: went home to Torfrida, told her everything that had happened, laughed over it with her, and then forgot Alftruda, Dolfin, and Gilbert, in the prospect of a great campaign in Holland.
CHAPTER XVII. – HOW HEREWARD TOOK THE NEWS FROM STANFORD BRIGG AND HASTINGS
After that, news came thick and fast.
News of all the fowl of heaven flocking to the feast of the great God, that they might eat the flesh of kings, and captains, and mighty men, and horses, and them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both bond and free.
News from Rome, how England, when conquered, was to be held as a fief of St. Peter, and spiritually, as well as temporarily, enslaved. News how the Gonfanon of St. Peter, and a ring with a bit of St. Peter himself enclosed therein, had come to Rouen, to go before the Norman host, as the Ark went before that of Israel.
Then news from the North. How Tosti had been to Sweyn, and bid him come back and win the country again, as Canute his uncle had done; and how the cautious Dane had answered that he was a much smaller man than Canute, and had enough to hold his own against the Norsemen, and could not afford to throw for such high stakes as his mighty uncle.
Then how Tosti had been to Norway, to Harold Hardraade, and asked him why he had been fighting fifteen years for Denmark, when England lay open to him. And how Harold of Norway had agreed to come; and how he had levied one half of the able-bodied men in Norway; and how he was gathering a mighty fleet at Solundir, in the mouth of the Sogne Fiord. Of all this Hereward was well informed; for Tosti came back again to St. Omer, and talked big. But Hereward and he had no dealings with each other. But at last, when Tosti tried to entice some of Hereward’s men to sail with him, Hereward sent him word that if he met him, he would kill him in the streets.
Then Tosti, who (though he wanted not for courage) knew that he was no match for Hereward, went off to Bruges, leaving his wife and family behind; gathered sixty ships at Ostend, went off to the Isle of Wight, and forced the landsfolk to give him money and food. And then Harold of England’s fleet, which was watching the coast against the Normans, drove him away; and he sailed off north, full of black rage against his brother Harold and all Englishmen, and burned, plundered, and murdered, along the coast of Lincolnshire, out of brute spite to the Danes who had expelled him.
Then came news how he had got into the Humber; how Earl Edwin and his Northumbrians had driven him out; and how he went off to Scotland to meet Harold of Norway; and how he had put his hands between Harold’s, and become his man.
And all the while the Norman camp at St. Pierre-sur-Dive grew and grew; and all was ready, if the wind would but change.
And so Hereward looked on, helpless, and saw these two great storm-clouds growing,—one from north, and one from south,—to burst upon his native land.
Two invasions at the same moment of time; and these no mere Viking raids for plunder, but deliberate attempts at conquest and colonization, by the two most famous captains of the age. What if both succeeded? What if the two storm-clouds swept across England, each on its own path, and met in the midst, to hurl their lightnings into each other? A fight between William of Normandy and Harold of Norway, on some moorland in Mercia,—it would be a battle of giants; a sight at which Odin and the Gods of Valhalla would rise from their seats, and throw away the mead-horn, to stare down on the deeds of heroes scarcely less mighty than themselves. Would that neither might win! Would that they would destroy and devour, till there was none left of Frenchmen or of Norwegians!
So sang Hereward, after his heathen fashion; and his housecarles applauded the song. But Torfrida shuddered.
“And what will become of the poor English in the mean time?”
“They have brought it on themselves,” said Hereward, bitterly. “Instead of giving the crown to the man who should have had it,—to Sweyn of Denmark,—they let Godwin put it on the head of a drivelling monk; and as they sowed, so will they reap.”
But Hereward’s own soul was black within him. To see these mighty events passing as it were within reach of his hand, and he unable to take his share in them,—for what share could he take? That of Tosti Godwinsson against his own nephews? That of Harold Godwinsson, the usurper? That of the tanner’s grandson against any man? Ah that he had been in England! Ah that he had been where he might have been,—where he ought to have been but for his own folly,—high in power in his native land,—perhaps a great earl; perhaps commander of all the armies of the Danelagh. And bitterly he cursed his youthful sins as he rode to and fro almost daily to the port of Calais, asking for news, and getting often only too much.
For now came news that the Norsemen had landed in Humber: that Edwin and Morcar were beaten at York; that Hardraade and Tosti were masters of the North.
And with that, news that, by the virtue of the relics of St. Valeri, which had been brought out of their shrine to frighten the demons of the storm, and by the intercession of the blessed St. Michael, patron of Normandy, the winds had changed, and William’s whole armament had crossed the Channel, landed upon an undefended shore, and fortified themselves at Pevensey and Hastings.
And then followed a fortnight of silence and torturing suspense.
Hereward could hardly eat, drink, sleep, or speak. He answered Torfrida’s consolations curtly and angrily, till she betook herself to silent caresses, as to a sick animal. But she loved him all the better for his sullenness; for it showed that his English heart was wakening again, sound and strong.
At last news came. He was down, as usual, at the port. A ship had just come in from the northward. A man just landed stood on the beach gesticulating, and calling in an unknown tongue to the bystanders, who laughed at him, and seemed inclined to misuse him.
Hereward galloped down the beach.
“Out of the way, villains! Why man, you are a Norseman!”
“Norseman am I, Earl, Thord Gunlaugsson is my name, and news I bring for the Countess Judith (as the French call her) that shall turn her golden hair to snow,—yea, and all fair lasses’ hair from Lindesness to Loffoden!”
“Is the Earl dead?”
“And Harold Sigurdsson!”
Hereward sat silent, appalled. For Tosti he cared not. But Harold Sigurdsson, Harold Hardraade, Harold the Viking, Harold the Varanger, Harold the Lionslayer, Harold of Constantinople, the bravest among champions, the wisest among kings, the cunningest among minstrels, the darling of the Vikings of the North; the one man whom Hereward had taken for his pattern and his ideal, the one man under whose banner he would have been proud to fight—the earth seemed empty, if Harold Hardraade were gone.
“Thord Gunlaugsson,” cried he, at last, “or whatever be thy name, if thou hast lied to me, I will draw thee with wild horses.”
“Would God that I did lie! I saw him fall with an arrow through his throat. Then Jarl Tosti took the Land-ravager and held it up till he died. Then Eystein Orre took it, coming up hot from the ships. And then he died likewise. Then they all died. We would take no quarter. We threw off our mail, and fought baresark, till all were dead together.” [Footnote: For the details of this battle, see Skorro Sturleson, or the admirable description in Bulwer’s “Harold.”]
“How camest thou, then, hither?”
“Styrkar the marshal escaped in the night, and I with him, and a few more. And Styrkar bade me bring the news to Flanders, to the Countess, while he took it to Olaf Haroldsson, who lay off in the ships.”
“And thou shalt take it. Martin! get this man a horse. A horse, ye villains, and a good one, on your lives!”
“And Tosti is dead?”
“Dead like a hero. Harold offered him quarter,—offered him his earldom, they say: even in the midst of battle; but he would not take it. He said he was the Sigurdsson’s man now, and true man he would be!”
“Harold offered him?—what art babbling about? Who fought you?”
“Harold Godwinsson, the king.”
“Where?”
“At Stanford Brigg, by York Town.”
“Harold Godwinsson slew Harold Sigurdsson? After this wolves may eat lions!”
“The Godwinsson is a gallant fighter, and a wise general, or I had not been here now.”
“Get on thy horse, man!” said he, scornfully and impatiently, “and gallop, if thou canst.”
“I have ridden many a mile in Ireland, Earl, and have not forgotten my seat.”
“Thou hast, hast thou?” said Martin; “thou art Thord Gunlaugsson of Waterford.”
“That am I. How knowest thou me, man?”
“I am of Waterford. Thou hadst a slave lass once, I think; Mew: they called her Mew, her skin it was so white.”
“What’s that to thee?” asked Thord, turning on him savagely.
“Why, I meant no harm. I saw her at Waterford when I was a boy, and thought her a fair lass enough, that is all.”
And Martin dropped into the rear. By this time they were at the gates of St. Omer.
As they rode side by side, Hereward got more details of the fight.
“I knew it would fall out so. I foretold it!” said Thord. “I had a dream. I saw us come to English land, and fight; and I saw the banners floating. And before the English army was a great witchwife, and rode upon a wolf, and he had a corpse in his bloody jaws. And when he had eaten one up, she threw him another, till he had swallowed all.”
“Did she throw him thine?” asked Martin, who ran holding by the stirrup.
“That did she, and eaten I saw myself. Yet here I am alive.”
“Then thy dreams were naught.”
“I do not know that. The wolf may have me yet.”
“I fear thou art fey.” [Footnote: Prophesying his own death.]
“What the devil is it to thee if I be?”
“Naught. But be comforted. I am a necromancer; and this I know by my art, that the weapon that will slay thee was never forged in Flanders here.”
“There was another man had a dream,” said Thord, turning from Martin angrily. “He was standing in the king’s ship, and he saw a great witchwife with a fork and a trough stand on the island. And he saw a fowl on every ship’s stem, a raven, or else an eagle, and he heard the witchwife sing an evil song.”
By this time they were in St. Omer.
Hereward rode straight to the Countess Judith’s house. He never had entered it yet, and was likely to be attacked if he entered it now. But when the door was opened, he thrust in with so earnest and sad a face that the servants let him pass, but not without growling and motions as of getting their weapons.
“I come in peace, my men, I come in peace: this is no time for brawls. Where is the steward, or one of the Countess’s ladies? Tell her, madam, that Hereward waits her commands, and entreats her, in the name of St. Mary and all Saints, to vouchsafe him one word in private.”
The lady hurried into the bower. The next moment Judith hurried out into the hall, her fair face blanched, her fair eyes wide with terror.
Hereward fell on his knee.
“What is this? It must be bad news if you bring it.”
“Madam, the grave covers all feuds. Earl Tosti was a very valiant hero; and would to God that we had been friends!”
She did not hear the end of the sentence, but fell back with a shriek into the women’s arms.
Hereward told them all that they needed to know of that fratricidal strife; and then to Thord Gunlaugsson,—
“Have you any token that this is true? Mind what I warned you, if you lied!”
“This have I, Earl and ladies,” and he drew from his bosom a reliquary. “Ulf the marshal took this off his neck, and bade me give it to none but his lady. Therefore, with your pardon, Sir Earl, I did not tell you that I had it, not knowing whether you were an honest man.”
“Thou hast done well, and an honest man thou shall find me. Come home, and I will feed thee at my own table; for I have been a sea-rover and a Viking myself.”
They left the reliquary with the ladies, and went.
“See to this good man, Martin.”
“That will I, as the apple of my eye.”
And Hereward went into Torfrida’s room.
“I have news, news!”
“So have I.”
“Harold Hardraade is slain, and Tosti too!”
“Where? how?”
“Harold Godwinsson slew them by York.”
“Brother has slain brother? O God that died on cross!” murmured Torfrida, “when will men look to thee, and have mercy on their own souls? But, Hereward, I have news,—news more terrible by far. It came an hour ago. I have been dreading your coming back.”
“Say on. If Harold Hardraade is dead, no worse can happen.”
“But Harold Godwinsson is dead!”
“Dead! Who next? William of Normandy? The world seems coming to an end, as the monks say it will soon.” [Footnote: There was a general rumor abroad that the end of the world was at hand, that the “one thousand years” of prophecy had expired.]
“A great battle has been fought at a place they call Heathfield.”
“Close by Hastings? Close to the landing-place? Harold must have flown thither back from York. What a captain the man is, after all.”
“Was. He is dead, and all the Godwinssons, and England lost.”
If Torfrida had feared the effect of her news, her heart was lightened at once as Hereward answered haughtily,—
“England lost? Sussex is not England, nor Wessex either, any more than Harold was king thereof. England lost? Let the tanner try to cross the Watling street, and he will find out that he has another stamp of Englishmen to deal with.”
“Hereward, Hereward, do not be unjust to the dead. Men say—the Normans say—that they fought like heroes.”
“I never doubted that; but it makes me mad—as it does all Eastern and Northern men—to hear these Wessex churls and Godwinssons calling themselves all England.”
Torfrida shook her head. To her, as to most foreigners, Wessex and the southeast counties were England; the most civilized; the most Norman; the seat of royalty; having all the prestige of law, and order, and wealth. And she was shrewd enough to see, that as it was the part of England which had most sympathy with Norman civilization, it was the very part where the Norman could most easily gain and keep his hold. The event proved that Torfrida was right: but all she said was, “It is dangerously near to France, at least.”
“It is that. I would sooner see 100,000 French north of the Humber, than 10,000 in Kent and Sussex, where he can hurry over supplies and men every week. It is the starting-point for him, if he means to conquer England piecemeal.”
“And he does.”
“And he shall not!” and Hereward started up, and walked to and fro. “If all the Godwinssons be dead, there are Leofricssons left, I trust, and Siward’s kin, and the Gospatricks in Northumbria. Ah? Where were my nephews in the battle? Not killed too, I trust?”
“They were not in the battle.”
“Not with their new brother-in-law? Much he has gained by throwing away the Swan-neck, like a base hound as he was, and marrying my pretty niece. But where were they?”
