Hereward, the Last of the English Part 59

"Ah," said the knight, "had I but hit a little harder!"

"You would have broke your sword into more splinters. My armor is enchanted. So yield like a reasonable and valiant man."

"What care I?" said the knight, stepping on to the earthwork, and sitting down quietly. "I vowed to St. Mary and King William that into Ely I would get this day; and in Ely I am; so I have done my work."

"And now you shall taste--as such a gallant knight deserves--the hospitality of Ely."

It was Torfrida who spoke.

"My husband's prisoners are mine; and I, when I find them such _prudhommes_ as you are, have no lighter chains for them than that which a lady's bower can afford."

Sir Dade was going to make an equally courteous answer, when over and above the shouts and curses of the combatants rose a yell so keen, so dreadful, as made all hurry forward to the rampart.

That which Hereward had foreseen was come at last. The bridge, strained more and more by its living burden, and by the falling tide, had parted,--not at the Ely end, where the sliding of the sow took off the pressure,--but at the end nearest the camp. One sideway roll it gave, and then, turning over, engulfed in that foul stream the flower of Norman chivalry; leaving a line--a full quarter of a mile in length--of wretches drowning in the dark water, or, more hideous still, in the bottomless slime of peat and mud.

Thousands are said to have perished. Their armor and weapons were found at times, by delvers and dikers, for centuries after; are found at times unto this day, beneath the rich drained cornfields which now fill up that black half-mile, or in the bed of the narrow brook to which the West.w.a.ter, robbed of its streams by the Bedford Level, has dwindled down at last.

William, they say, struck his tents and departed forthwith, "groaning from deep grief of heart;" and so ended the first battle of Aldreth.

CHAPTER XXIX.

HOW SIR DADE BROUGHT NEWS FROM ELY.

A month after the fight, there came into the camp at Cambridge, riding on a good horse, himself fat and well-liking, none other than Sir Dade.

Boisterously he was received, as one alive from the dead; and questioned as to his adventures and sufferings.

"Adventures I have had, and strange ones; but for sufferings, instead of fetter-galls, I bring back, as you see, a new suit of clothes; instead of an empty and starved stomach, a surfeit from good victuals and good liquor; and whereas I went into Ely on foot, I came out on a fast hackney."

So into William's tent he went; and there he told his tale.

"So, Dade, my friend?" quoth the Duke, in high good humor, for he loved Dade, "you seem to have been in good company?"

"Never in better, Sire, save in your presence. Of the earls and knights in Ely, all I can say is, G.o.d's pity that they are rebels, for more gallant and courteous knights or more perfect warriors never saw I, neither in Normandy nor at Constantinople, among the Varangers themselves."

"Eh! and what are the names of these gallants; for you have used your eyes and ears, of course?"

"Edwin and Morcar, the earls,--two fine young lads."

"I know it. Go on"; and a shade pa.s.sed over William's brow, as he thought of his own falsehood, and his fair Constance, weeping in vain for the fair bridegroom whom he had promised to her.

"Siward Barn, as they call him, the boy Orgar, and Thurkill Barn. Those are the knights. Egelwin, bishop of Durham, is there too; and besides them all, and above them all, Hereward. The like of that knight I may have seen. His better saw I never."

"Sir fool!" said Earl Warrenne, who had not yet--small blame to him--forgotten his brother's death. "They have soused thy brains with their muddy ale, till thou knowest not friend from foe. What! hast thou to come hither praising up to the King's Majesty such an outlawed villain as that, with whom no honest knight would keep company?"

"If you, Earl Warrenne, ever found Dade drunk or lying, it is more than the King here has done."

"Let him speak, Earl," said William. "I have not an honester man in my camp; and he speaks for my information, not for yours."

"Then for yours will I speak, Sir King. These men treated me knightly, and sent me away without ransom."

"They had an eye to their own profit, it seems," grumbled the Earl.

"But force me they did to swear on the holy Gospels that I should tell your Majesty the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And I keep my oath," quoth Dade.

"Go on, then, without fear or favor. Are there any other men of note in the island!"

"No."

"Are they in want of provisions?"

"Look how they have fattened me."

"What do they complain of?"

"I will tell you, Sir King. The monks, like many more, took fright at the coming over of our French men of G.o.d to set right all their filthy, barbarous ways; and that is why they threw Ely open to the rebels."

"I will be even with the sots," quoth William.

"However, they think that danger blown over just now; for they have a story among them, which, as my Lord the King never heard before, he may as well hear now."

"Eh?"

"How your Majesty should have sent across the sea a whole shipload of French monks."

"That have I, and will more, till I reduce these swine into something like obedience to his Holiness of Rome."

"Ah, but your Majesty has not heard how one Bruman, a valiant English knight, was sailing on the sea and caught those monks. Whereon he tied a great sack to the ship's head, and cut the bottom out, and made every one of those monks get into that sack and so fall through into the sea; whereby he rid the monks of Ely of their rivals."

"Pish! why tell me such an old-wives' fable, knight?"

"Because the monks believe that old-wives' fable, and are stout-hearted and stiff-necked accordingly."

"The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church," said William's chaplain, a pupil and friend of Lanfranc; "and if these men of Belial drowned every man of G.o.d in Normandy, ten would spring up in their places to convert this benighted and besotted land of Simonites and Balaamites, whose priests, like the brutes which perish, scruple not to defile themselves and the service of the altar with things which they impudently call their wives."

"We know that, good chaplain," quoth William, impatiently. He had enough of that language from Lanfranc himself; and, moreover, was thinking more of the Isle of Ely than of the celibacy of the clergy.

"Well, Sir Dade?"

"So they have got together all their kin; for among these monks every one is kin to a Thane, or Knight, or even an Earl. And there they are, brother by brother, cousin by cousin, knee to knee, and back to back, like a pack of wolves, and that in a hold which you will not enter yet awhile."

"Does my friend Dade doubt his Duke's skill at last?"

"Sir Duke,--Sir King I mean now, for King you are and deserve to be,--I know what you can do. I remember how we took England at one blow on Senlac field; but see you here, Sir King. How will you take an island where four kings such as you (if the world would hold four such at once) could not stop one churl from ploughing the land, or one bird-catcher from setting lime-twigs?"