Hereward, the Last of the English Part 23

"Not yet! not yet! I have something to--to show you."

She motioned him to go up the narrow stairs, or rather ladder, which led to the upper floor, and then led him into her chamber.

A lady's chamber was then, in days when privacy was little cared for, her usual reception room; and the bed, which stood in an alcove, was the common seat of her and her guests. But Torfrida did not ask him to sit down. She led the way onward towards a door beyond.

Hereward followed, glancing with awe at the books, parchments, and strange instruments which lay on the table and the floor.

The old Lapp nurse sat in the window, sewing busily. She looked up, and smiled meaningly. But as she saw Torfrida unlock the further door with one of the keys which hung at her girdle, she croaked out,--

"Too fast! Too fast! Trust lightly, and repent heavily."

"Trust once and for all, or never trust at all," said Torfrida, as she opened the door.

Hereward saw within rich dresses hung on perches round the wall, and chests barred and padlocked.

"These are treasures," said she, "which many a knight and n.o.bleman has coveted. By cunning, by flattery, by threats of force even, have they tried to win what lies here,--and Torfrida herself, too, for the sake of her wealth. But thanks to the Abbot my uncle, Torfrida is still her own mistress, and mistress of the wealth which her forefathers won by sea and land far away in the East. All here is mine,--and if you be but true to me, all mine is yours. Lift the lid for me, it is too heavy for my arms."

Hereward did so; and saw within golden cups and bracelets, horns of ivory and silver, bags of coin, and among them a mail shirt and helmet, on which he fixed at once silent and greedy eyes.

She looked at his face askance, and smiled. "Yes, these are more to Hereward's taste than gold and jewels. And he shall have them. He shall have them as a proof that if Torfrida has set her love upon a worthy knight, she is at least worthy of him; and does not demand, without being able to give in return."

And she took out the armor, and held it up to him.

"This Is the work of dwarfs or enchanters! This was not forged by mortal man! It must have come out of some old cavern, or dragon's h.o.a.rd!" said Hereward, in astonishment at the extreme delicacy and slightness of the mail-rings, and the richness of the gold and silver with which both hauberk and helm were inlaid.

"Enchanted it is, they say; but its maker, who can tell? My ancestor won it, and by the side of Charles Martel. Listen, and I will tell you how.

"You have heard of fair Provence, where I spent my youth; the land of the sunny south; the land of the fig and the olive, the mulberry and the rose, the tulip and the anemone, and all rich fruits and fair flowers,--the land where every city is piled with temples and theatres and towers as high as heaven, which the old Romans built with their enchantments, and tormented the blessed martyrs therein."

"Heavens, how beautiful you are!" cried Hereward, as her voice shaped itself into a song, and her eyes flashed, at the remembrance of her southern home.

Torfrida was not altogether angry at finding that he was thinking of her, and not of her words.

"Peace, and listen. You know how the Paynim held that land,--the Saracens, to whom Mahound taught all the wisdom of Solomon,--as they teach us in turn," she added in a lower voice.

"And how Charles and his Paladins," [Charles Martel and Charlemagne were perpetually confounded in the legends of the time] "drove them out, and conquered the country again for G.o.d and his mother."

"I have heard--" but he did not take his eyes off her face.

"They were in the theatre at Arles, the Saracens, where the blessed martyr St. Trophimus had died in torments; they had set up there their idol of Mahound, and turned the place into a fortress. Charles burnt it over their heads: you see--I have seen--the blackened walls, the blood-stained marbles, to this day. Then they fled into the plain, and there they turned and fought. Under Montmajeur, by the hermit's cell, they fought a summer's day, till they were all slain. There was an Emir among them, black as a raven, clad in magic armor. All lances turned from it, all swords shivered on it. He rode through the press without a wound, while every stroke of his scymitar sh.o.r.e off a head of horse or man. Charles himself rode at him, and smote him with his hammer. They heard the blow in Avignon, full thirty miles away. The flame flashed out from the magic armor a fathom's length, blinding all around; and when they recovered their sight, the enchanter was far away in the battle, killing as he went.

"Then Charles cried, 'Who will stop that devil, whom no steel can wound?

Help us, O blessed martyr St. Trophimus, and save the soldiers of the Cross from shame!'

"Then cried Torfrid, my forefather, 'What use in crying to St. Trophimus?

He could not help himself, when the Paynim burnt him: and how can he help us? A tough arm is worth a score of martyrs here.'

"And he rode at that Emir, and gript him in his arms. They both fell, and rolled together on the ground; but Torfrid never loosed his hold till he had crushed out his unbaptized soul and sent it to join Mahound in h.e.l.l.

"Then he took his armor, and brought it home in triumph. But after a while he fell sick of a fever; and the blessed St. Trophimus appeared to him, and told him that it was a punishment for his blasphemy in the battle. So he repented, and vowed to serve the saint all his life. On which he was healed instantly, and fell to religion, and went back to Montmajeur; and there he was a hermit in the cave under the rock, and tended the graves hewn in the living stone, where his old comrades, the Paladins who were slain, sleep side by side round the church of the Holy Cross. But the armor he left here; and he laid a curse upon it, that whosoever of his descendants should lose that armor in fight, should die childless, without a son to wield a sword. And therefore it is that none of his ancestors, valiant as they have been, have dared to put this harness on their backs."

And so ended a story, which Torfrida believed utterly, and Hereward likewise.

"And now, Hereward mine, dare you wear that magic armor, and face old Torfrid's curse?"

"What dare I not?"

"Think. If you lose it, in you your race must end."

"Let it end. I accept the curse."

And he put the armor on.

But he trembled as he did it. Atheism and superst.i.tion go too often hand in hand; and G.o.dless as he was, sceptical of Providence itself, and much more of the help of saint or angel, still the curse of the old warrior, like the malice of a witch or a demon, was to him a thing possible, probable, and formidable.

She looked at him in pride and exultation.

"It is yours,--the invulnerable harness! Wear it in the forefront of the battle! And if weapon wound you through it, may I, as punishment for my lie, suffer the same upon my tender body,--a wound for every wound of yours, my knight!" [Footnote: "Volo enim in meo tale quid nunc perpeti corpore semel, quicquid eas ferrei vel e metallo excederet."]

And after that they sat side by side, and talked of love with all honor and honesty, never heeding the old hag, who crooned to herself in her barbarian tongue,--

"Quick thaw, long frost, Quick joy, long pain, Soon found, soon lost, You will take your gift again."

CHAPTER XI.

HOW THE HOLLANDERS TOOK HEREWARD FOR A MAGICIAN.

Of this weary Holland war which dragged itself on, campaign after campaign, for several years, what need to tell? There was, doubtless, the due amount of murder, plunder, burning, and worse; and the final event was certain from the beginning. It was a struggle between civilized and disciplined men, armed to the teeth, well furnished with ships and military engines, against poor simple folk in "felt coats stiffened with tar or turpentine, or in very short jackets of hide," says the chronicler, "who fought by threes, two with a crooked lance and three darts each, and between them a man with a sword or an axe, who held his shield before those two;--a very great mult.i.tude, but in composition utterly undisciplined," who came down to the sea-coast, with carts and wagons, to carry off the spoils of the Flemings, and bade them all surrender at discretion, and go home again after giving up Count Robert and Hereward, with the "tribunes of the brigades," to be put to death, as valiant South Sea islanders might have done; and then found themselves as sheep to the slaughter before the cunning Hereward, whom they esteemed a magician on account of his craft and his invulnerable armor.

So at least says Leofric's paraphrast, who tells long, confused stories of battles and campaigns, some of them without due regard to chronology; for it is certain that the brave Frisians could not on Robert's first landing have "feared lest they should be conquered by foreigners, as they had heard the English were by the French," because that event had not then happened.

And so much for the war among the Meres of Scheldt.

CHAPTER XII.

HOW HEREWARD TURNED BERSERK.

Torfrida's heart misgave her that first night as to the effects of her exceeding frankness. Her pride in the first place was somewhat wounded; she had dreamed of a knight who would worship her as his queen, hang on her smile, die at her frown; and she had meant to bring Hereward to her feet as such a slave, in boundless grat.i.tude; but had he not rather held his own, and brought her to his feet, by a.s.suming her devotion as his right? And if he a.s.sumed that, how far could she trust him not to abuse his claim? Was he quite as perfect, seen close, as seen afar off? And now that the intoxication of that meeting had pa.s.sed off, she began to remember more than one little fault which she would have gladly seen mended. Certain roughnesses of manner which contrasted unfavorably with the polish (merely external though it was) of the Flemish and Norman knights; a boastful self-sufficiency, too, which bordered on the ludicrous at whiles even in her partial eyes; which would be a matter of open laughter to the knights of the Court. Besides, if they laughed at him, they would laugh at her for choosing him. And then wounded vanity came in to help wounded pride; and she sat over the cold embers till almost dawn of day, her head between her hands, musing sadly, and half wishing that the irrevocable yesterday had never come.

But when, after a few months, Hereward returned from his first campaign in Holland, covered with glory and renown, all smiles, and beauty, and health, and good-humor, and grat.i.tude for the magic armor which had preserved him unhurt, then Torfrida forgot all her fears, and thought herself the happiest maid alive for four-and-twenty hours at least.