Hereward, the Last of the English Part 48

"William of Normandy, yield or die!"

The knight lay still and stark.

"Ride on!" roared Hereward from the ground. "Ride at them, and strike hard! You will soon find out which is which. This booty I must pick for myself. What are you at?" roared he, after his knights. "Spread off the road, and keep your line, as I told you, and don't override each other!

Curse the hot-headed fools! The Normans will scatter them like sparrows.

Run on, men-at-arms, to stop the French if we are broken. And don't forget Guisnes field and the horses' legs. Now, King, are you come to life yet?"

"You have killed him," quoth Leofric the deacon, whom Hereward had beckoned to stop with him.

"I hope not. Lend me a knife. He is a much slighter man than I fancied,"

said Hereward, as they got his helmet off.

And when it was off, both started and stared. For they had uncovered, not the beetling brow, Roman nose, and firm curved lip of the Ulysses of the middle age, but the face of a fair lad, with long straw-colored hair, and soft blue eyes staring into vacancy.

"Who are you?" shouted Hereward, saying very bad words, "who come here aping the name of king?"

"Mother! Christina! Margaret! Waltheof Earl!" moaned the lad, raising his head and letting it fall again.

"It is the Atheling!" cried Leofric.

Hereward rose, and stood over the boy.

"Ah! what was I doing to handle him so tenderly? I took him for the Mamzer, and thought of a king's ransom."

"Do you call that tenderly? You have nigh pulled the boy's head off."

"Would that I had! Ah," went on Hereward, apostrophizing the unconscious Atheling,--"ah, that I had broken that white neck once and for all! To have sent thee feet foremost to Winchester, to lie by thy grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and then to tell Norman William that he must fight it out henceforth, not with a straw malkin like thee, which the very crows are not afraid to perch on, but with a c.o.c.k of a very different hackle,--Sweyn Ulfsson, King of Denmark."

And Hereward drew Brain-biter.

"For mercy's sake! you will not harm the lad?"

"If I were a wise man now, and hard-hearted as wise men should be, I should--I should--" and he played the point of the sword backwards and forwards, nearer and nearer to the lad's throat.

"Master! master!" cried Leofric, clinging to his knees; "by all the saints! What would the Blessed Virgin say to such a deed!"

"Well, I suppose you are right. And I fear what my lady at home might say; and we must not do anything to vex her, you know. Well, let us do it handsomely, if we must do it. Get water somewhere, in his helmet. No, you need not linger. I will not cut his throat before you come back."

Leofric went off in search of water, and Hereward knelt with the Atheling's head on his knee, and on his lip a sneer at all things in heaven and earth. To have that lad stand between him and all his projects, and to be forced, for honor's sake, to let him stand!

But soon his men returned, seemingly in high glee, and other knights with them.

"Hey, lads!" said he, "I aimed at the falcon and shot the goose. Here is Edgar Atheling prisoner. Shall we put him to ransom?"

"He has no money, and Malcolm of Scotland is much too wise to lend him any," said some one. And some more rough jokes pa.s.sed.

"Do you know, sirs, that he who lies there is your king?" asked a very tall and n.o.ble-looking knight.

"That do we not," said Hereward, sharply. "There is no king in England this day, as far as I know. And there will be none north of the Watling Street, till he be chosen in full husting, and anointed at York, as well as Winchester or London. We have had one king made for us in the last forty years, and we intend to make the next ourselves."

"And who art thou, who talkest so bold, of king-making?"

"And who art thou, who askest so bold who I am?"

"I am Waltheof Siwardsson, the Earl, and yon is my army behind me."

"And I am Hereward Leofricsson, the outlaw, and yon is my army behind me."

If the two champions had flown at each other's throats, and their armies had followed their example, simply as dogs fly at each other, they know not why, no one would have been astonished in those unhappy times.

But it fell not out upon that wise; for Waltheof, leaping from his horse, pulled off his helmet, and seizing Hereward by both hands, cried,--

"Blessed is the day which sees again in England Hereward, who has upheld throughout all lands and seas the honor of English chivalry!"

"And blessed is the day in which Hereward meets the head of the house of Siward where he should be, at the head of his own men, in his own earldom.

When I saw my friend, thy brother Osbiorn, brought into the camp at Dunsinane with all his wounds in front, I wept a young man's tears, and said, 'There ends the glory of the White-Bear's house!' But this day I say, the White-Bear's blood is risen from the grave in Waltheof Siwardsson, who with his single axe kept the gate of York against all the army of the French; and who shall keep against them all England, if he will be as wise as he is brave."

Was Hereward honest in his words? Hardly so. He wished to be honest. As he looked upon that magnificent young man, he hoped and trusted that his words were true. But he gave a second look at the face, and whispered to himself: "Weak, weak. He will be led by priests; perhaps by William himself. I must be courteous; but confide I must not."

The men stood round, and looked with admiration on the two most splendid Englishmen then alive. Hereward had taken off his helmet likewise, and the contrast between the two was as striking as the completeness of each of them in his own style of beauty. It was the contrast between the slow-hound and the deer-hound; each alike high bred; but the former, short, st.u.r.dy, cheerful, and sagacious; the latter tall, stately, melancholy, and not over-wise withal.

Waltheof was a full head and shoulders taller than Hereward,--one of the tallest men of his generation, and of a strength which would have been gigantic, but for the too great length of neck and limb, which made him loose and slow in body, as he was somewhat loose and slow in mind. An old man's child, although that old man was as one of the old giants, there was a vein of weakness in him, which showed in the arched eyebrow, the sleepy pale blue eye, the small soft mouth, the lazy voice, the narrow and lofty brain over a shallow brow. His face was not that of a warrior, but of a saint in a painted window; and to his own place he went, and became a saint, in his due time. But that he could outgeneral William, that he could even manage Gospatrick and his intrigues Hereward expected as little as that his own nephews Edwin and Morcar could do it.

"I have to thank you, n.o.ble sir," said Waltheof, languidly, "for sending your knights to our rescue when we were really hard bestead,--I fear much by our own fault. Had they told me whose men they were, I should not have spoken to you so roughly as I fear I did."

"There is no offence. Let Englishmen speak their minds, as long as English land is above sea. But how did you get into trouble, and with whom?"

Waltheof told him how he was going round the country, raising forces in the name of the Atheling, when, as they were straggling along the Roman road, Gilbert of Ghent had dashed out on them from a wood, cut their line in two, driven Waltheof one way, and the Atheling another, and that the Atheling had only escaped by riding, as they saw, for his life.

"Well done, old Gilbert!" laughed Hereward. "You must beware, my Lord Earl, how you venture within reach of that old bear's paw!"

"Bear? By the by, Sir Hereward," asked Waltheof, whose thoughts ran loosely right and left, "why is it that you carry the white bear on your banner?"

"Do you not know? Your house ought to have a blood-feud against me. I slew your great-uncle, or cousin, or some other kinsman, at Gilbert's house in Scotland long ago; and since then I sleep on his skin every night, and carry his picture in my banner all day."

"Blood-feuds are solemn things," said Waltheof, frowning. "Karl killed my grandfather Aldred at the battle of Settrington, and his four sons are with the army at York now--"

"For the love of all saints and of England, do not think of avenging that!

Every man must now put away old grudges, and remember that he has but one foe,--William and his Frenchmen."

"Very n.o.bly spoken. But those sons of Karl--and I think you said you had killed a kinsman of mine?"

"It was a bear, Lord Earl, a great white bear. Cannot you understand a jest? Or are you going to take up the quarrels of all white bears that are slain between here and Iceland? You will end by burning Crowland minster then, for there are twelve of your kinsmen's skins there, which Canute gave forty years ago."

"Burn Crowland minster? St. Guthlac and all saints forbid!" said Waltheof, crossing himself devoutly.

"Are you a monk-monger into the bargain, as well as a dolt? A bad prospect for us, if you are," said Hereward to himself.

"Ah, my dear Lord King!" said Waltheof, "and you are recovering?"