Hereward, the Last of the English Part 53

That night the monks of Peterborough prayed in the minster till the long hours pa.s.sed into the short. The poor corrodiers, and other servants of the monastery, fled from the town outside into the Milton woods. The monks prayed on inside till an hour after matin. When the first flush of the summer's dawn began to show in the northeastern sky, they heard mingling with their own chant another chant, which Peterborough had not heard since it was Medehampstead, three hundred years ago,--the terrible Yuch-hey-saa-saa-saa,--the war-song of the Vikings of the north.

Their chant stopped of itself. With blanched faces and trembling knees they fled, regardless of all discipline, up into the minster tower, and from the leads looked out northeastward on the fen.

The first rays of the summer sun were just streaming over the vast sheet of emerald, and glittering upon the winding river; and on a winding line, too, seemingly endless, of scarlet coats and shields, black hulls, gilded p.o.o.ps and vanes and beak-heads, and the flash and foam of innumerable oars.

And nearer and louder came the oar-roll, like thunder working up from the northeast; and mingled with it that grim yet laughing Heysaa, which bespoke in its very note the revelry of slaughter.

The ships had all their sails on deck. But as they came nearer, the monks could see the banners of the two foremost vessels.

The one was the red and white of the terrible Dannebrog. The other, the scarcely less terrible white bear of Hereward.

"He will burn the minster! He has vowed to do it. As a child he vowed, and he must do it. In this very minster the fiend entered into him and possessed him; and to this minster has the fiend brought him back to do his will. Satan, my brethren, having a special spite (as must needs be) against St. Peter, rock and pillar of the Holy Church, chose out and inspired this man, even from his mother's womb, that he might be the foe and robber of St. Peter, and the hater of all who, like my humility, honor him, and strive to bring this English land into due obedience to that blessed apostle. Bring forth the relics, my brethren. Bring forth, above all things, those filings of St. Peter's own chains,--the special glory of our monastery, and perhaps its safeguard this day."

Some such bombast would any monk of those days have talked in like case.

And yet, so strange a thing is man, he might have been withal, like Herluin, a shrewd and valiant man.

They brought out all the relics. They brought out the filings themselves, in a box of gold. They held them out over the walls at the ships, and called on all the saints to whom they belonged. But they stopped that line of scarlet, black, and gold as much as their spiritual descendants stop the lava-stream of Vesuvius, when they hold out similar matters at them, with a hope unchanged by the experience of eight hundred years. The Heysaa rose louder and nearer. The Danes were coming. And they came.

And all the while a thousand skylarks rose from off the fen, and chanted their own chant aloft, as if appealing to Heaven against that which man's greed and man's rage and man's superst.i.tion had made of this fair earth of G.o.d.

The relics had been brought out. But, as they would not work, the only thing to be done was to put them back again and hide them safe, lest they should bow down like Bel and stoop like Nebo, and be carried, like them, into captivity themselves, being worth a very large sum of money in the eyes of the more Christian part of the Danish host.

Then to hide the treasures as well as they could; which (says the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) they hid somewhere in the steeple.

The Danes were landing now. The shout which they gave, as they leaped on sh.o.r.e, made the hearts of the poor monks sink low. Would they be murdered, as well as robbed? Perhaps not,--probably not. Hereward would see to that.

And some wanted to capitulate.

Herluin would not hear of it. They were safe enough. St. Peter's relic might not have worked a miracle on the spot; but it must have done something. St. Peter had been appealed to on his honor, and on his honor he must surely take the matter up. At all events, the walls and gates were strong, and the Danes had no artillery. Let them howl and rage round the holy place, till Abbot Thorold and the Frenchmen of the country rose and drove them to their ships.

In that last thought the cunning Norman was not so far wrong. The Danes pushed up through the little town, and to the minster gates: but entrance was impossible; and they prowled round and round like raging wolves about a winter steading; but found no crack of entry.

Prior Herluin grew bold; and coming to the leads of the gateway tower, looked over cautiously, and holding up a certain most sacred emblem,--not to be profaned in these pages,--cursed them in the name of his whole Pantheon.

"Aha, Herluin! Are you there?" asked a short, square man in gay armor.

"Have you forgotten the peat-stack outside Bolld.y.k.e Gate, and how you bade light it under me thirty years since?"

"Thou art Winter?" and the Prior uttered what would be considered, from any but a churchman's lips, a blasphemous and bloodthirsty curse; but which was, as their writings sufficiently testify, merely one of the lawful weapons or "arts" of those Christians who were "forbidden to fight,"--the other weapon or art being that of lying.

"Aha! That goes like rain off a duck's back to one who has been a minster scholar in his time. You! Danes! Ostmen! down! If you shoot at that man I'll cut your heads off. He is the oldest foe I have in the world, and the only one who ever hit me without my hitting him again; and n.o.body shall touch him but me. So down bows, I say."

The Danes--humorous all of them--saw that there was a jest toward, and perhaps some earnest too, and joined in jeering the Prior.

Herluin had ducked his head behind the parapet; not from cowardice, but simply because he had on no mail, and might be shot any moment. But when he heard Winter forbid them to touch him, he lifted up his head, and gave his old pupil as good as he brought.

With his sharp, swift Norman priest's tongue he sneered, he jeered, he scolded, he argued; and then threatened, suddenly changing his tone, in words of real eloquence. He appealed to the superst.i.tions of his hearers.

He threatened them with supernatural vengeance.

Some of them began to slink away frightened. St. Peter was an ill man to have a blood feud with.

Winter stood, laughing and jeering again, for full ten minutes. At last: "I asked, and you have not answered: have you forgotten the peat-stack outside Bolld.y.k.e Gate? For if you have, Hereward has not. He has piled it against the gate, and it should be burnt through by this time. Go and see."

Herluin disappeared with a curse.

"Now, you sea-c.o.c.ks," said Winter, springing up, "we'll to the Bolld.y.k.e Gate, and all start fair."

The Bolld.y.k.e Gate was on fire; and more, so were the suburbs. There was no time to save them, as Hereward would gladly have done, for the sake of the poor corrodiers. They must go,--on to the Bolld.y.k.e Gate. Who cared to put out flames behind him, with all the treasures of Golden Borough before him? In a few minutes all the town was alight. In a few minutes more, the monastery likewise.

A fire is detestable enough at all times, but most detestable by day. At night it is customary, a work of darkness which lights up the dark, picturesque, magnificent, with a fitness Tartarean and diabolic. But under a glaring sun, amid green fields and blue skies, all its wickedness is revealed without its beauty. You see its works, and little more. The flame is hardly noticed. All that is seen is a canker eating up G.o.d's works, cracking the bones of its prey,--for that horrible cracking is uglier than all stage-scene glares,--cruelly and shamelessly under the very eye of the great, honest, kindly sun.

And that felt Hereward, as he saw Peterborough burn. He could not put his thoughts into words, as men of this day can: so much the better for him, perhaps. But he felt all the more intensely--as did men of his day--the things he could not speak. All he said was aside to Winter,--

"It is a dark job. I wish it had been done in the dark." And Winter knew what he meant.

Then the men rushed into the Bolld.y.k.e Gate, while Hereward and Winter stood and looked with their men, whom they kept close together, waiting their commands. The Danes and their allies cared not for the great glowing heap of peat. They cared not for each other, hardly for themselves. They rushed into the gap; they thrust the glowing heap inward through the gateway with their lances; they thrust each other down into it, and trampled over them to fall themselves, rising scorched and withered, and yet struggling on toward the gold of the Golden Borough. One savage Lett caught another round the waist, and hurled him bodily into the fire, crying in his wild tongue:--

"You will make a good stepping-stone for me."

"That is not fair," quoth Hereward, and clove him to the chine.

It was wild work. But the Golden Borough was won.

"We must in now and save the monks," said Hereward, and dashed over the embers.

He was only just in time. In the midst of the great court were all the monks, huddled together like a flock of sheep, some kneeling, most weeping bitterly, after the fashion of monks.

Only Herluin stood in front of them, at bay, a lofty crucifix in his hand.

He had no mind to weep. But with a face of calm and bitter wrath, he preferred words of peace and entreaty. They were what the time needed.

Therefore they should be given. To-morrow he would write to Bishop Egelsin, to excommunicate with bell, book, and candle, to the lowest pit of Tartarus, all who had done the deed.

But to-day he spoke them fair. However, his fair speeches profited little, not being understood by a horde of Letts and Finns, who howled and bayed at him, and tried to tear the crucifix from his hands; but feared "the white Christ."

They were already gaining courage from their own yells; in a moment more blood would have been shed, and then a general ma.s.sacre must have ensued.

Hereward saw it, and shouting, "After me, Hereward's men! a bear! a bear!"

swung Letts and Finns right and left like corn-sheaves, and stood face to face with Herluin.

An angry Finn smote him on the hind-head full with a stone axe. He staggered, and then looked round and laughed.

"Fool! hast thou not heard that Hereward's armor was forged by dwarfs in the mountain-bowels? Off, and hunt for gold, or it will be all gone."

The Finn, who was astonished at getting no more from his blow than a few sparks, and expected instant death in return, took the hint and vanished jabbering, as did his fellows.

"Now, Herluin, the Frenchman!" said Hereward.

"Now, Hereward, the robber of saints!" said Herluin.

It was a fine sight. The soldier and the churchman, the Englishman and the Frenchman, the man of the then world, and the man of the then Church, pitted fairly, face to face.