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CHAPTER XXXI. – HOW THEY FOUGHT AGAIN AT ALDRETH
Hereward came back in fear and trembling, after all. He believed in the magic powers of the witch of Brandon; and he asked Torfrida, in his simplicity, whether she was not cunning enough to defeat her spells by counter spells.
Torfrida smiled, and shook her head.
“My knight, I have long since given up such vanities. Let us not fight evil with evil, but rather with good. Better are prayers than charms; for the former are heard in heaven above, and the latter only in the pit below. Let me and all the women of Ely go rather in procession to St. Etheldreda’s well, there above the fort at Aldreth, and pray St. Etheldreda to be with us when the day shall come, and defend her own isle and the honor of us women who have taken refuge in her holy arms.”
So all the women of Ely walked out barefoot to St. Etheldreda’s well, with Torfrida at their head clothed in sackcloth, and with fetters on her wrists and waist and ankles; which she vowed, after the strange, sudden, earnest fashion of those times, never to take off again till she saw the French host flee from Aldreth before the face of St. Etheldreda. So they prayed, while Hereward and his men worked at the forts below. And when they came back, and Torfrida was washing her feet, sore and bleeding from her pilgrimage, Hereward came in.
“You have murdered your poor soft feet, and taken nothing thereby, I fear.”
“I have. If I had walked on sharp razors all the way, I would have done it gladly, to know what I know now. As I prayed I looked out over the fen; and St. Etheldreda put a thought into my heart. But it is so terrible a one, that I fear to tell it to you. And yet it seems our only chance.”
Hereward threw himself at her feet, and prayed her to tell. At last she spoke, as one half afraid of her own words,—
“Will the reeds burn, Hereward?”
Hereward kissed her feet again and again, calling her his prophetess, his savior.
“Burn! yes, like tinder, in this March wind, if the drought only holds. Pray that the drought may hold, Torfrida.”
“There, there, say no more. How hard-hearted war makes even us women! There, help me to take off this rough sackcloth, and dress myself again.”
Meanwhile William had moved his army again to Cambridge, and on to Willingham field, and there he began to throw up those “globos and montanas,” of which Leofric’s paraphraser talks, but of which now no trace remains. Then he began to rebuild his causeway, broader and stronger; and commanded all the fishermen of the Ouse to bring their boats to Cotinglade, and ferry over his materials. “Among whom came Hereward in his boat, with head and beard shaven lest he should be known, and worked diligently among the rest. But the sun did not set that day without mischief; for before Hereward went off, he finished his work by setting the whole on fire, so that it was all burnt, and some of the French killed and drowned.”
And so he went on, with stratagems and ambushes, till “after seven days’ continual fighting, they had hardly done one day’s work; save four ‘globos’ of wood, in which they intended to put their artillery. But on the eighth day they determined to attack the isle, putting in the midst of them that pythoness woman on a high place, where she might be safe freely to exercise her art.”
It was not Hereward alone who had entreated Torfrida to exercise her magic art in their behalf. But she steadily refused, and made good Abbot Thurstan support her refusal by a strict declaration, that he would have no fiends’ games played in Ely, as long as he was abbot alive on land.
Torfrida, meanwhile, grew utterly wild. Her conscience smote her, in spite of her belief that St. Etheldreda had inspired her, at the terrible resource which she had hinted to her husband, and which she knew well he would carry out with terrible success. Pictures of agony and death floated before her eyes, and kept her awake at night. She watched long hours in the church in prayer; she fasted; she disciplined her tender body with sharp pains; she tried, after the fashion of those times, to atone for her sin, if sin it was. At last she had worked herself up into a religious frenzy. She saw St. Etheldreda in the clouds, towering over the isle, menacing the French host with her virgin palm-branch. She uttered wild prophecies of ruin and defeat to the French; and then, when her frenzy collapsed, moaned secretly of ruin and defeat hereafter to themselves. But she would be bold; she would play her part; she would encourage the heroes who looked to her as one inspired, wiser and loftier than themselves.
And so it befell, that when the men marched down to Haddenham that afternoon, Torfrida rode at their head on a white charger, robed from throat to ankle in sackcloth, her fetters clanking on her limbs. But she called on the English to see in her the emblem of England, captive yet, unconquered, and to break her fetters and the worse fetters of every woman in England who was the toy and slave of the brutal invaders; and so fierce a triumph sparkled from her wild hawk-eyes that the Englishmen looked up to her weird beauty as to that of an inspired saint; and when the Normans came on to the assault there stood on a grassy mound behind the English fort a figure clothed in sackcloth, barefooted and bareheaded, with fetters shining on waist, and wrist, and ankle,—her long black locks streaming in the wind, her long white arms stretched crosswise toward heaven, in imitation of Moses of old above the battle with Amalek; invoking St. Etheldreda and all the powers of Heaven, and chanting doom and defiance to the invaders.
And the English looked on her, and cried: “She is a prophetess! We will surely do some great deed this day, or die around her feet like heroes!”
And opposite to her, upon the Norman tower, the old hag of Brandon howled and gibbered with filthy gestures, calling for the thunder-storm which did not come; for all above, the sky was cloudless blue.
And the English saw and felt, though they could not speak it, dumb nation as they were, the contrast between the spirit of cruelty and darkness and the spirit of freedom and light.
So strong was the new bridge, that William trusted himself upon it on horseback, with Ivo Taillebois at his side.
William doubted the powers of the witch, and felt rather ashamed of his new helpmate; but he was confident in his bridge, and in the heavy artillery which he had placed in his four towers.
Ivo Taillebois was utterly confident in his witch, and in the bridge likewise.
William waited for the rising of the tide; and when the tide was near its height, he commanded the artillery to open, and clear the fort opposite of the English. Then with crash and twang, the balistas and catapults went off, and great stones and heavy lances hurtled through the air.
“Back!” shouted Torfrida, raised almost to madness, by fasting, self-torture, and religious frenzy. “Out of yon fort, every man. Why waste your lives under that artillery? Stand still this day, and see how the saints of Heaven shall fight for you.”
So utter was the reverence which she commanded for the moment, that every man drew back, and crowded round her feet outside the fort.
“The cowards are fleeing already. Let your men go, Sir King!” shouted Taillebois.
“On to the assault! Strike for Normandy!” shouted William.
“I fear much,” said he to himself, “that this is some stratagem of that Hereward’s. But conquered they must be.”
The evening breeze curled up the reach. The great pike splashed out from the weedy shores, and sent the white-fish flying in shoals into the low glare of the setting sun; and heeded not, stupid things, the barges packed with mailed men, which swarmed in the reeds on either side the bridge, and began to push out into the river.
The starlings swung in thousands round the reed-ronds, looking to settle in their wonted place: but dare not; and rose and swung round again, telling each other, in their manifold pipings, how all the reed-ronds teemed with mailed men. And all above, the sky was cloudless blue.
And then came a trample, a roll of many feet on the soft spongy peat, a low murmur which rose into wild shouts of “Dex Aie!” as a human tide poured along the causeway, and past the witch of Brandon Heath.
“‘Dex Aie?’” quoth William, with a sneer. “‘Debbles Aie!’ would fit better.”
“If, Sire, the powers above would have helped us, we should have been happy enough to–But if they would not, it is not our fault if we try below,” said Ivo Taillebois.
William laughed. “It is well to have two strings to one’s bow, sir. Forward, men! forward!” shouted he, riding out to the bridge-end, under the tower.
“Forward!” shouted Ivo Taillebois.
“Forward!” shouted the hideous hag overhead. “The spirit of the well fights for you.”
“Fight for yourselves,” said William.
There was twenty yards of deep clear water between Frenchman and Englishman. Only twenty yards. Not only the arrows and arblast quarrels, but heavy hand-javelins, flew across every moment; every now and then a man toppled forward, and plunged into the blue depth among the eels and pike, to find his comrades of the summer before; then the stream was still once more. The coots and water-hens swam in and out of the reeds, and wondered what it was all about. The water-lilies flapped upon the ripple, as lonely as in the loneliest mere. But their floats were soon broken, their white cups stained with human gore. Twenty yards of deep clear water. And treasure inestimable to win by crossing it.
They thrust out baulks, canoes, pontoons; they crawled upon them like ants, and thrust out more yet beyond, heedless of their comrades, who slipped, and splashed, and sank, holding out vain hands to hands too busy to seize them. And always the old witch jabbered overhead, with her cantrips, pointing, mumming, praying for the storm; while all above, the sky was cloudless blue.
And always on the mound opposite, while darts and quarrels whistled round her head, stood Torfrida, pointing with outstretched scornful finger at the stragglers in the river, and chanting loudly, what the Frenchmen could not tell; but it made their hearts, as it was meant to do, melt like wax within them.
“They have a counter witch to yours, Ivo, it seems; and a fairer one. I am afraid the devils, especially if Asmodeus be at hand, are more likely to listen to her than to that old broomstick-rider aloft.”
“Fair is, that fair cause has, Sir King.”
“A good argument for honest men, but none for fiends. What is the fair fiend pointing at so earnestly there?”
“Somewhat among the reeds. Hark to her now! She is singing, somewhat more like an angel than a fiend, I will say for her.”
And Torfrida’s bold song, coming clear and sweet across the water, rose louder and shriller till it almost drowned the jabbering of the witch.
“She sees more there than we do.”
“I see it!” cried William, smiting his hand upon his thigh. “Par le splendeur Dex! She has been showing them where to fire the reeds; and they have done it!”
A puff of smoke; a wisp of flame; and then another and another; and a canoe shot out from the reeds on the French shore, and glided into the reeds of the island.
“The reeds are on fire, men! Have a care,” shouted Ivo.
“Silence, fool! Frighten them once, and they will leap like sheep into that gulf. Men! right about! Draw off,—slowly and in order. We will attack again to-morrow.”
The cool voice of the great captain arose too late. A line of flame was leaping above the reed bed, crackling and howling before the evening breeze. The column on the causeway had seen their danger but too soon, and fled. But whither?
A shower of arrows, quarrels, javelins, fell upon the head of the column as it tried to face about and retreat, confusing it more and more. One arrow, shot by no common aim, went clean through William’s shield, and pinned it to the mailed flesh. He could not stifle a cry of pain.
“You are wounded, Sire. Ride for your life! It is worth that of a thousand of these churls,” and Ivo seized William’s bridle and dragged him, in spite of himself, through the cowering, shrieking, struggling crowd.
On came the flames, leaping and crackling, laughing and shrieking, like a live fiend. The archers and slingers In the boats cowered before it; and fell, scorched corpses, as it swept on. It reached the causeway, surged up, recoiled from the mass of human beings, then sprang over their heads and passed onwards, girding them with flame.
The reeds were burning around them; the timbers of the bridge caught fire; the peat and fagots smouldered beneath their feet. They sprang from the burning footway and plunged into the fathomless bog, covering their faces and eyes with scorched hands, and then sank in the black gurgling slime.
Ivo dragged William on, regardless of curses and prayers from his soldiery; and they reached the shore just in time to see between them and the water a long black smouldering writhing line; the morass to right and left, which had been a minute before deep reed, an open smutty pool, dotted with boatsful of shrieking and cursing men; and at the causeway-end the tower, with the flame climbing up its posts, and the witch of Brandon throwing herself desperately from the top, and falling dead upon the embers, a motionless heap of rags.
“Fool that you are! Fool that I was!” cried the great king, as he rolled off his horse at his tent door, cursing with rage and pain.
Ivo Taillebois sneaked off, sent over to Mildenhall for the second witch, and hanged her, as some small comfort to his soul. Neither did he forget to search the cabin till he found buried in a crock the bits of his own gold chain and various other treasures, for which the wretched old women had bartered their souls. All which he confiscated to his own use, as a much injured man.
The next day William withdrew his army. The men refused to face again that blood-stained pass. The English spells, they said, were stronger than theirs, or than the daring of brave men. Let William take Torfrida and burn her, as she had burned them, with reeds out of Willingham fen; then might they try to storm Ely again.
Torfrida saw them turn, flee, die in agony. Her work was done; her passion exhausted; her self-torture, and the mere weight of her fetters, which she had sustained during her passion, weighed her down; she dropped senseless on the turf, and lay in a trance for many hours.
Then she arose, and casting off her fetters and her sackcloth, was herself again: but a sadder woman till her dying day.
CHAPTER XXXII. – HOW KING WILLIAM TOOK COUNSEL OF A CHURCHMAN
If Torfrida was exhausted, so was Hereward likewise. He knew well that a repulse was not a defeat. He knew well the indomitable persistence, the boundless resources, of the mastermind whom he defied; and he knew well that another attempt would be made, and then another, till—though it took seven years in the doing—Ely would be won at last. To hold out doggedly as long as he could was his plan: to obtain the best terms he could for his comrades. And he might obtain good terms at last. William might be glad to pay a fair price in order to escape such a thorn in his side as the camp of refuge, and might deal—or, at least, promise to deal—mercifully and generously with the last remnant of the English gentry. For himself yield he would not: when all was over, he would flee to the sea, with Torfrida and his own housecarles, and turn Viking; or go to Sweyn Ulfsson in Denmark, and die a free man.
The English did not foresee these things. Their hearts were lifted up with their victory, and they laughed at William and his French, and drank Torfrida’s health much too often for their own good. Hereward did not care to undeceive them. But he could not help speaking his mind in the abbot’s chamber to Thurstan, Egelwin, and his nephews, and to Sigtryg Ranaldsson, who was still in Ely, not only because he had promised to stay there, but because he could not get out if he would.
Blockaded they were utterly, by land and water. The isle furnished a fair supply of food; and what was wanting, they obtained by foraging. But they had laid the land waste for so many miles round, that their plundering raids brought them in less than of old; and if they went far, they fell in with the French, and lost good men, even though they were generally successful. So provisions were running somewhat short, and would run shorter still.
Moreover, there was a great cause of anxiety. Bishop Egelwin, Abbot Thurstan, and the monks of Ely were in rebellion, not only against King William, but more or less against the Pope of Rome. They might be excommunicated. The minster lands might be taken away.
Bishop Egelwin set his face like a flint. He expected no mercy. All he had ever done for the French was to warn Robert Comyn that if he stayed in Durham, evil would befall him. But that was as little worth to him as it was to the said Robert. And no mercy he craved. The less a man had, the more fit he was for Heaven. He could but die; and that he had known ever since he was a chanter-boy. Whether he died in Ely, or in prison, mattered little to him, provided they did not refuse him the sacraments; and that they would hardly do. But call the Duke of Normandy his rightful sovereign he would not, because he was not,—nor anybody else just now, as far as he could see.
Valiant likewise was Abbot Thurstan, for himself. But he had—unlike Bishop Egelwin, whose diocese had been given to a Frenchman—an abbey, monks, and broad lands, whereof he was father and steward. And he must do what was best for the abbey, and also what the monks would let him do. For severe as was the discipline of a minster in time of peace, yet in time of war, when life and death were in question, monks had ere now turned valiant from very fear, like Cato’s mouse, and mutinied: and so might the monks of Ely.
And Edwin and Morcar?
No man knows what they said or thought; perhaps no man cared much, even in their own days. No hint does any chronicler give of what manner of men they were, or what manner of deeds they did. Fair, gentle, noble, beloved even by William, they are mere names, and nothing more, in history: and it is to be supposed, therefore, that they were nothing more in fact. The race of Leofric and Godiva had worn itself out.
One night the confederates had sat late, talking over the future more earnestly than usual. Edwin, usually sad enough, was especially sad that night.
Hereward jested with him, tried to cheer him; but he was silent, would not drink, and went away before the rest.
The next morning he was gone, and with him half a dozen of his private housecarles.
Hereward was terrified. If defections once began, they would be endless. The camp would fall to pieces, and every man among them would be hanged, mutilated, or imprisoned, one by one, helplessly. They must stand or fall together.
He went raging to Morcar. Morcar knew naught of it. On the faith and honor of a knight, he knew naught. Only his brother had said to him a day or two before, that he must see his betrothed before he died.
“He is gone to William, then? Does he think to win her now,—an outcast and a beggar,—when he was refused her with broad lands and a thousand men at his back? Fool! See that thou play not the fool likewise, nephew, or—”
“Or what?” said Morcar, defiantly.
“Or thou wilt go, whither Edwin is gone,—to betrayal and ruin.”
“Why so? He has been kind enough to Waltheof and Gospatrick, why not to Edwin?”
“Because,” laughed Hereward, “he wanted Waltheof, and he does not want you and Edwin. He can keep Mercia quiet without your help. Northumbria and the Fens he cannot without Waltheof’s. They are a rougher set as you go east and north, as you should know already, and must have one of themselves over them to keep them in good humor for a while. When he has used Waltheof as his stalking-horse long enough to build a castle every ten miles, he will throw him away like a worn bowstring, Earl Morcar, nephew mine.”
Morcar shook his head.
In a week more he was gone likewise. He came to William at Brandon.
“You are come in at last, young earl?” said William, sternly. “You are come too late.”
“I throw myself on your knightly faith,” said Morcar. But he had come in an angry and unlucky hour.
“How well have you kept your own, twice a rebel, that you should appeal to mine? Take him away.”
“And hang him?” asked Ivo Taillebois.
“Pish! No,—thou old butcher. Put him in irons, and send him into Normandy.”
“Send him to Roger de Beaumont, Sire. Roger’s son is safe in Morcar’s castle at Warwick, so it is but fair that Morcar should be safe in Roger’s.”.
And to Roger de Beaumont he was sent, while young Roger was Lord of Warwick, and all around that once was Leofric and Godiva’s.
Morcar lay in a Norman keep till the day of William’s death. On his death-bed the tyrant’s heart smote him, and he sent orders to release him. For a few short days, or hours, he breathed free air again. Then Rufus shut him up once more, and forever.
And that was the end of Earl Morcar.
A few weeks after, three men came to the camp at Brandon, and they brought a head to the king. And when William looked upon it, it was the head of Edwin.
The human heart must have burst up again in the tyrant, as he looked on the fair face of him he had so loved, and so wronged; for they say he wept.
The knights and earls stood round, amazed and awed, as they saw iron tears ran down Pluto’s cheek.
“How came this here, knaves?” thundered he at last.
They told a rambling story, how Edwin always would needs go to Winchester, to see the queen, for she would stand his friend, and do him right. And how they could not get to Winchester, for fear of the French, and wandered in woods and wolds; and how they were set upon, and hunted; and how Edwin still was mad to go to Winchester: but when he could not, he would go to Blethwallon and his Welsh; and how Earl Randal of Chester set upon them; and how they got between a stream and the tide-way of the Dee, and were cut off. And how Edwin would not yield. And how then they slew him in self-defence, and Randal let them bring the head to the king.
This, or something like it, was their story. But who could believe traitors? Where Edwin wandered, what he did during those months, no man knows. All that is known is, three men brought his head to William, and told some such tale. And so the old nobility of England died up and down the ruts and shaughs, like wounded birds; and, as of wounded birds, none knew or cared how far they had run, or how their broken bones had ached before they died.
“Out of their own mouths they are condemned, says Holy Writ,” thundered William. “Hang them on high.”
And hanged on high they were, on Brandon heath.
Then the king turned on his courtiers, glad to ease his own conscience by cursing them.
“This is your doing, sirs! If I had not listened to your base counsels, Edwin might have been now my faithful liegeman and my son-in-law; and I had had one more Englishman left in peace, and one less sin upon my soul.”
“And one less thorn in thy side,” quoth Ivo Taillebois.
“Who spoke to thee? Ralph Guader, thou gavest me the counsel: thou wilt answer it to God and his saints.”
“That did I not. It was Earl Roger, because he wanted the man’s Shropshire lands.”
Whereon high words ensued; and the king gave the earl the lie in his teeth, which the earl did not forget.
“I think,” said the rough, shrewd voice of Ivo, “that instead of crying over spilt milk,—for milk the lad was, and never would have grown to good beef, had he lived to my age—”
“Who spoke to thee?”
“No man, and for that reason I spoke myself. I have lands in Spalding, by your Majesty’s grace, and wish to enjoy them in peace, having worked for them hard enough—and how can I do that, as long as Hereward sits in Ely?”
“Splendeur Dex!” said William, “them art right, old butcher.”
So they laid their heads together to slay Hereward. And after they had talked awhile, then spoke William’s chaplain for the nonce, an Italian, a friend and pupil of Lanfranc of Pavia, an Italian also, then Archbishop of Canterbury, scourging and imprisoning English monks in the south. And he spoke like an Italian of those times, who knew the ways of Rome.
“If his Majesty will allow my humility to suggest—”
“What? Thy humility is proud enough under the rose, I will warrant: but it has a Roman wit under the rose likewise. Speak!”
“That when the secular and carnal arm has failed, as it is written [Footnote: I do not laugh at Holy Scripture myself. I only insert this as a specimen of the usual mediaeval “cant,”—a name and a practice which are both derived, not from Puritans, but from monks.]—He poureth contempt upon princes, and letteth them wander out of the way in the wilderness—or fens; for the Latin word, and I doubt not the Hebrew, has both meanings.”
“Splendeur Dex!” cried William, bitterly; “that hath he done with a vengeance! Thou art right so far, Clerk!”
“Yet helpeth He the poor, videlicet, His Church and the religious, who are vowed to holy poverty, out of misery, videlicet, the oppression of barbarous customs, and maketh them households like a flock of sheep.”
“They do that for themselves already, here in England,” said William, with a sneer at the fancied morals of the English monks and clergy. [Footnote: The alleged profligacy and sensuality of the English Church before the Conquest rests merely on a few violent and vague expressions of the Norman monks who displaced them. No facts, as far as I can find, have ever been alleged. And without facts on the other side, an impartial man will hold by the one fact which is certain, that the Church of England, popish as it was, was, unfortunately for it, not popish enough; and from its insular freedom, obnoxious to the Church of Rome, and the ultramontane clergy of Normandy; and was therefore to be believed capable—and therefore again accused—of any and every crime.]
“But Heaven, and not the Church, does it for the true poor, whom your Majesty is bringing in, to your endless glory.”
“But what has all this to do with taking Ely?” asked William, impatiently. “I asked thee for reason, and not sermons.”
“This. That it is in the power of the Holy Father,—and that power he would doubtless allow you, as his dear son and most faithful servant, to employ for yourself, without sending to Rome, which might cause painful delays—to—”
It might seem strange that William, Taillebois, Guader, Warrenne, short-spoken, hard-headed, hard-swearing warriors, could allow, complacently, a smooth churchman to dawdle on like this, counting his periods on his fingers, and seemingly never coming to the point.
But they knew well, that the churchman was a far cunninger, as well as a more learned, man than themselves. They knew well that they could not hurry him, and that they need not; that he would make his point at last, hunting it out step by step, and letting them see how he got thither, like a cunning hound. They knew that if he spoke, he had thought long and craftily, till he had made up his mind; and that, therefore, he would very probably make up their minds likewise. It was—as usual in that age—the conquest, not of a heavenly spirit, though it boasted itself such, but of a cultivated mind over brute flesh.
They might have said all this aloud, and yet the churchman would have gone on, as he did, where he left off, with unaltered blandness of tone.
“To convert to other uses the goods of the Church,—to convert them to profane uses would, I need not say, be a sacrilege as horrible to Heaven as impossible to so pious a monarch—”
Ivo Taillebois winced. He had just stolen a manor from the monks of Crowland, and meant to keep it.
“Church lands belonging to abbeys or sees, whose abbots or bishops are contumaciously disobedient to the Holy See, or to their lawful monarch, he being in the communion of the Church and at peace with the said Holy See. If, therefore,—to come to that point at which my incapacity, through the devious windings of my own simplicity, has been tending, but with halting steps, from the moment that your Majesty deigned to hear—”
“Put in the spur, man!” said Ivo, tired at last, “and run the deer to soil.”
“Hurry no man’s cattle, especially thine own,” answered the churchman, with so shrewd a wink, and so cheery a voice, that Ivo, when he recovered from his surprise, cried,—
“Why, thou art a good huntsman thyself, I believe now.”
“All things to all men, if by any means—But to return. If your Majesty should think fit to proclaim to the recalcitrants of Ely, that unless they submit themselves to your Royal Grace—and to that, of course, of His Holiness, our Father—within a certain day, you will convert to other uses—premising, to avoid scandal, that those uses shall be for the benefit of Holy Church—all lands and manors of theirs lying without the precincts of the Isle of Ely,—those lands being, as is known, large, and of great value,—Quid plura? Why burden your exalted intellect by detailing to you consequences which it has, long ere now, foreseen.”
“–” quoth William, who was as sharp as the Italian, and had seen it all. “I will make thee a bishop!”
“Spare to burden my weakness,” said the chaplain; and slipt away into the shade.
“You will take his advice?” asked Ivo.
“I will.”
“Then I shall see that Torfrida burn at last.”
“Burn her?” and William swore.
“I promised my soldiers to burn the witch with reeds out of Haddenham fen, as she had burned them; and I must keep my knightly word.”
William swore yet more. Ivo Taillebois was a butcher and a churl.
“Call me not butcher and churl too often, Lord King, ere thou hast found whether thou needest me or not. Rough I may be, false was I never.”
“That thou wert not,” said William, who needed Taillebois much, and feared him somewhat; and remarked something meaning in his voice, which made him calm himself, diplomat as he was, instantly. “But burn Torfrida thou shalt not.”
“Well, I care not. I have seen a woman burnt ere now, and had no fancy for the screeching. Beside, they say she is a very fair dame, and has a fair daughter, too, coming on, and she may very well make a wife for a Norman.”
