Hereward, the Last of the English Part 47

Then Hereward, as he had promised, set fire to the three farms close to the Bruneswold; and all his outlawed friends, lurking in the forest, knew by that signal that Hereward was come again. So they cleansed out the old house: though they did not take down the heads from off the gable; and Torfrida went about it, and about it, and confessed that England was, after all, a pleasant place enough. And they were as happy, it may be, for a week or two, as ever they had been in their lives.

"And now," said Torfrida, "while you see to your army, I must be doing; for I am a lady now, and mistress of great estates. So I must be seeing to the poor."

"But you cannot speak their tongue."

"Can I not? Do you think that in the face of coming to England and fighting here, and plotting here, and being, may be, an earl's countess, I have not made Martin Lightfoot teach me your English tongue, till I can speak it as well as you? I kept that hidden as a surprise for you, that you might find out, when you most needed, how Torfrida loved you."

"As if I had not found out already! O woman! woman! I verily believe that G.o.d made you alone, and left the Devil to make us butchers of men."

Meanwhile went round through all the fens, and north into the Bruneswold, and away again to Lincoln and merry Sherwood, that Hereward was come again. And Gilbert of Ghent, keeping Lincoln Castle for the Conqueror, was perplexed in mind, and looked well to gates and bars and sentinels; for Hereward sent him at once a message, that forasmuch as he had forgotten his warning in Bruges street, and put a rascal cook into his mother's manors, he should ride Odin's horse on the highest ash in the Bruneswold.

On which Gilbert of Ghent, inquiring what Odin's horse might be, and finding it to signify the ash-tree whereon, as sacred to Odin, thieves were hanged by Danes and Norse, made answer,--

That he Gilbert had not put his cook into Bourne, nor otherwise harmed Hereward or his. That Bourne had been seized by the king himself, together with Earl Morcar's lands in those parts, as all men knew. That the said cook so pleased the king with a dish of stewed eel-pout, which he served up to him at Cambridge, and which the king had never eaten before, that the king begged the said cook of him Gilbert and took him away; and that after, so he heard, the said cook had begged the said manors of Bourne of the king, without the knowledge or consent of him Gilbert. That he therefore knew naught of the matter. That if Hereward meant to keep the king's peace, he might live in Bourne till Doomsday, for aught he, Gilbert, cared. But that if he and his men meant to break the king's peace, and attack Lincoln city, he Gilbert would nail their skins to the door of Lincoln Cathedral, as they used to do by the heathen Danes in old time. And that, therefore, they now understood each other.

At which Hereward laughed, and said that they had done that for many a year.

And now poured into Bourne from every side brave men and true,--some great holders dispossessed of their land; some the sons of holders who were not yet dispossessed; some Morcar's men, some Edwin's, who had been turned out by the king.

To him came "Guenoch and Alutus Grogan, foremost in all valor and fort.i.tude, tall and large, and ready for work," and with them their three nephews, G.o.dwin Gille, "so called because he was not inferior to that G.o.dwin Guthlacsson who is preached much in the fables of the ancients,"

"and Douti and Outi, [Footnote: Named in Domesday-book (?).] the twins, alike in face and manners;" and G.o.dric, the knight of Corby, nephew of the Count of Warwick; and Tosti of Davenesse, his kinsman; and Azer Va.s.s, whose father had possessed Lincoln Tower; and Leofwin Moue, [Footnote: Probably the Leofwin who had lands in Bourne.]--that is, the scythe, so called, "because when he was mowing all alone, and twenty country folk set on him with pitchforks and javelins, he slew and wounded almost every one, sweeping his scythe among them as one that moweth"; and Wluncus the Black-face, so called because he once blackened his face with coal, and came unknown among the enemy, and slew ten of them with one lance; and "Turbertin, a great-nephew (surely a mistake) of Earl Edwin"; and Leofwin Prat (perhaps the ancestor of the ancient and honorable house of Pratt of Ryston), so called from his "Praet" or craft, "because he had oft escaped cunningly when taken by the enemy, having more than once killed his keepers;" and the steward of Drayton; and Thurkill the outlaw, Hereward's cook; and Oger, Hereward's kinsman; and "Winter and Linach, two very famous ones;" and Ra.n.a.ld, the butler of Ramsey Abbey,--"he was the standard-bearer"; and Wulfric the Black and Wulfric the White; and Hugh the Norman, a priest; and Wulfard, his brother; and Tosti and G.o.dwin of Rothwell; and Alsin; and Hekill; and Hugh the Breton, who was Hereward's chaplain, and Whishaw, his brother, "a magnificent" knight, which two came with him from Flanders; and so forth;--names merely of whom naught is known, save, in a few cases, from Domesday-book, the manors which they held. But honor to their very names! Honor to the last heroes of the old English race!

These valiant gentlemen, with the housecarles whom, more or fewer, they would bring with them, const.i.tuted a formidable force, as after years proved well. But having got his men, Hereward's first care was, doubtless, to teach them that art of war of which they, like true Englishmen, knew nothing.

The art of war has changed little, if at all, by the introduction of gunpowder. The campaigns of Hannibal and Caesar succeeded by the same tactics as those of Frederic or Wellington; and so, as far as we can judge, did those of the master-general of his age, William of Normandy.

But of those tactics the English knew nothing. Their armies were little more than tumultuous levies, in which men marched and fought under local leaders, often divided by local jealousies. The commissariats of the armies seem to have been so worthless, that they had to plunder friends as well, as foes as they went along; and with plunder came every sort of excess: as when the northern men marching down to meet Harold G.o.dwinsson, and demand young Edwin as their earl, laid waste, seemingly out of mere brute wantonness, the country round Northampton, which must have been in Edwin's earldom, or at least in that of his brother Morcar. And even the local leaders were not over-well obeyed. The reckless spirit of personal independence, especially among the Anglo-Danes, prevented anything like discipline, or organized movement of ma.s.ses, and made every battle degenerate into a confusion of single combats.

But Hereward had learned that art of war, which enabled the Norman to crush, piecemeal, with inferior numbers, the vast but straggling levies of the English. His men, mostly outlaws and homeless, kept together by the pressure from without, and free from local jealousies, resembled rather an army of professional soldiers than a country _posse comitatus_. And to the discipline which he instilled into them; to his ability in marching and manoeuvring troops; to his care for their food and for their transport, possibly, also, to his training them in that art of fighting on horseback in which the men of Wess.e.x, if not the Anglo-Danes of the East, are said to have been quite unskilled,--in short, to all that he had learned, as a mercenary, under Robert the Frison, and among the highly civilized warriors of Flanders and Normandy, must be attributed the fact, that he and his little army defied, for years, the utmost efforts of the Normans, appearing and disappearing with such strange swiftness, and conquering against such strange odds, as enshrouded the guerilla captain in an atmosphere of myth and wonder, only to be accounted for, in the mind of Normans as well as English, by the supernatural counsels of his sorceress wife.

But Hereward grew anxious and more anxious, as days and weeks went on, and yet there was no news of Osbiorn and his Danes at Norwich. Time was precious. He had to march his little army to the Wash, and then transport it by boats--no easy matter--to Lynn in Norfolk, as his nearest point of attack. And as the time went on, Earl Warren and Ralph de Guader would have gathered their forces between him and the Danes, and a landing at Lynn might become impossible. Meanwhile there were bruits of great doings in the north of Lincolnshire. Young Earl Waltheof was said to be there, and Edgar the Atheling with him; but what it portended, no man knew.

Morcar was said to have raised the centre of Mercia, and to be near Stafford; Edwin to have raised the Welsh, and to be at Chester with Alfgiva, his sister, Harold G.o.dwinsson's widow. And Hereward sent spies along the Roman Watling Street--the only road, then, toward the northwest of England--and spies northward along the Roman road to Lincoln. But the former met the French in force near Stafford, and came back much faster than they went. And the latter stumbled on Gilbert of Ghent, riding out of Lincoln to Sleaford, and had to flee into the fens, and came back much slower than they went.

At last news came. For into Bourne stalked Wulfric the Heron, with axe and bow, and leaping-pole on shoulder, and an evil tale he brought.

The Danes had been beaten utterly at Norwich. Ralph de Guader and his Frenchmen had fought like lions. They had killed many Danes in the a.s.sault on the castle. They had sallied out on them as they recoiled, and driven them into the river, drowning many more. The Danes had gone down the Yare again, and out to sea northward, no man knew whither. He, the Heron, prowling about the fenlands of Norfolk to pick off straggling Frenchmen and looking out for the Danes, had heard all the news from the landsfolk.

He had watched the Danish fleet along the sh.o.r.e as far as Blakeney. But when they came to the isle, they stood out to sea, right northwest. He, the Heron, believed that they were gone for Humber Mouth.

After a while, he had heard how Hereward was come again and sent round the war-arrow, and thought that a landless man could be in no better company; wherefore he had taken boat, and come across the deep fen. And there he was, if they had need of him.

"Need of you?" said Hereward, who had heard of the deed at Wrokesham Bridge. "Need of a hundred like you. But this is bitter news."

And he went in to ask counsel of Torfrida, ready to weep with rage. He had disappointed, deceived his men. He had drawn them into a snare. He had promised that the Danes should come. How should he look them in the face?

"Look them in the face? Do that at once--now--without losing a moment.

Call them together and tell them all. If their hearts are staunch, you may do great things without the traitor earl. If their hearts fail them, you would have done nothing with them worthy of yourself, had you had Norway as well as Denmark at your back. At least, be true with them, as your only chance of keeping them true to you."

"Wise, wise wife," said Hereward, and went out and called his band together, and told them every word, and all that had pa.s.sed since he left Calais Straits.

"And now I have deceived you, and entrapped you, and I have no right to be your captain more. He that will depart in peace, let him depart, before the Frenchmen close in on us on every side and swallow us up at one mouthful."

Not a man answered.

"I say it again: He that will depart, let him depart."

They stood thoughtful.

Ra.n.a.ld, the Monk of Ramsey, drove the White-Bear banner firm into the earth, tucked up his monk's frock, and threw his long axe over his shoulder, as if preparing for action.

Winter spoke at last.

"If all go, there are two men here who stay, and fight by Hereward's side as long as there is a Frenchman left on English soil; for they have sworn an oath to Heaven and to St. Peter, and that oath will they keep. What say you, Gwenoch, knighted with us at Peterborough?"

Gwenoch stepped to Hereward's side.

"None shall go!" shouted a dozen voices. "With Hereward we will live and die. Let him lead us to Lincoln, to Stafford, where he will. We can save England for ourselves without the help of Danes."

"It is well for one at least of you, gentlemen, that you are in this pleasant mind," quoth Ra.n.a.ld the monk.

"Well for all of us, thou valiant purveyor of beef and beer."

"Well for one. For the first man that had turned to go, I would have brained him with this axe."

"And now, gallant gentlemen," said Hereward, "we must take new counsel, as our old has failed. Whither shall we go? For stay here, eating up the country, we must not do."

"They say that Waltheof is in Lindsay, raising the landsfolk. Let us go and join him."

"We can, at least, find what he means to do. There can be no better counsel. Let us march. Only we must keep clear of Lincoln as yet. I hear that Gilbert has a strong garrison there, and we are not strong enough yet to force it."

So they rode north, and up the Roman road toward Lincoln, sending out spies as they went; and soon they had news of Waltheof,--news, too, that he was between them and Lincoln.

"Then the sooner we are with him, the better, for he will find himself in trouble ere long, if old Gilbert gets news of him. So run your best, footmen, for forward we must get."

And as they came up the Roman road, they were aware of a great press of men in front of them, and hard fighting toward.

Some of the English would have spurred forward at once. But Hereward held them back with loud reproaches.

"Will you forget all I have told you in the first skirmish, like so many dogs when they see a bull? Keep together for five minutes more, the pot will not be cool before we get our sup of it. I verily believe that it is Waltheof, and that Gilbert has caught him already."

As he spoke, one part of the combatants broke up, and fled right and left; and a knight in full armor galloped furiously down the road right at them, followed by two or three more.

"Here comes some one very valiant, or very much afeared," said Hereward, as the horseman rode right upon him, shouting,--

"I am the King!"

"The King?" roared Hereward, and dropping his lance, spurred his horse forward, kicking his feet clear of the stirrups. He caught the knight round the neck, dragged him over his horse's tail, and fell with him to the ground.

The armor clashed; the sparks flew from the old gray Roman flints; and Hereward, rolling over once, rose, and knelt upon his prisoner.