Hereward, the Last of the English Part 69

"What! Did you want her yourself? On my honor I knew not of it. But have patience. You shall have her yet, and all her lands, if you will hear my counsel, and keep it."

"But you would give her to Hereward!"

"And to you too. It is a poor bait, say these frogs of fenmen, that will not take two pike running. Listen to me. I must kill this Hereward. I hate him. I cannot eat my meat for thinking of him. Kill him I must."

"And so must I."

"Then we are both agreed. Let us work together, and never mind if one's blood be old and the other's new. I am neither fool nor weakly, as thou knowest."

Ascelin could not but a.s.sent.

"Then here. We must send the King's message. But we must add to it."

"That is dangerous."

"So is war; so is eating, drinking; so is everything. But we must not let Hereward come in. We must drive him to despair. Make the messenger add but one word,--that the king exempts from the amnesty Torfrida, on account of----You can put it into more scholarly shape than I can."

"On account of her abominable and notorious sorceries; and demands that she shall be given up forthwith to the ecclesiastical power, to be judged as she deserves."

"Just so. And then for a load of reeds out of Haddenham fen."

"Heaven forbid!" said Ascelin, who had loved her once. "Would not perpetual imprisonment suffice?"

"What care I? That is the churchmen's affair, not ours. But I fear we shall not get her. Even so Hereward will flee with her,--maybe escape to Flanders, or Denmark. He can escape through a rat's-hole if he will. And then we are at peace. I had sooner kill him and have done with it: but out of the way he must be put."

So they sent a monk in with the message, and commanded him to tell the article about the Lady Torfrida, not only to Hereward, but to the abbot and all the monks.

A curt and fierce answer came back, not from Hereward, but from Torfrida herself,--that William of Normandy was no knight himself, or he would not offer a knight his life, on condition of burning his lady.

William swore horribly. "What is all this about?" They told him--as much as they chose to tell him. He was very wroth. "Who was Ivo Taillebois, to add to his message? He had said that Torfrida should not burn." Taillebois was stout; for he had won the secretary over to his side meanwhile. He had said nothing about burning. He had merely supplied an oversight of the king's. The woman, as the secretary knew, could not, with all deference to his Majesty, be included in an amnesty. She was liable to ecclesiastical censure, and the ecclesiastical courts. William might exercise his influence on them in all lawful ways, and more, remit her sentence, even so far as to pardon her entirely, if his merciful temper should so incline him. But meanwhile, what better could he, Ivo, have done, than to remind the monks of Ely that she was a sorceress; that she had committed grave crimes, and was liable to punishment herself, and they to punishment also, as her shelterers and accomplices? What he wanted was to bring over the monks; and he believed that message had been a good stroke toward that. As for Hereward, the king need not think of him. He never would come in alive. He had sworn an oath, and he would keep it.

And so the matter ended.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

HOW THE MONKS OF ELY DID AFTER THEIR KIND.

William's bolt, or rather inextinguishable Greek fire, could not have fallen into Ely at a more propitious moment.

Hereward was away, with a large body of men, and many ships, foraging in the northeastern fens. He might not be back for a week.

Abbot Thurstan--for what cause is not said--had lost heart a little while before, and fled to "Angerhale, taking with him the ornaments and treasure of the church."

Hereward had discovered his flight with deadly fear: but provisions he must have, and forth he must go, leaving Ely in charge of half a dozen independent English gentlemen, each of whom would needs have his own way, just because it was his own.

Only Torfrida he took, and put her hand into the hand of Ra.n.a.ld Sigtrygsson, and said, "Thou true comrade and perfect knight, as I did by thy wife, do thou by mine, if aught befall."

And Ra.n.a.ld swore first by the white Christ, and then by the head of Sleipnir, Odin's horse, that he would stand by Torfrida till the last; and then, if need was, slay her.

"You will not need, King Ra.n.a.ld. I can slay myself," said she, as she took the Ost-Dane's hard, honest hand.

And Hereward went, seemingly by Mepal or Sutton. Then came the message; and all men in Ely knew it.

Torfrida stormed down to the monks, in honest indignation, to demand that they should send to William, and purge her of the calumny. She found the Chapter-door barred and bolted. They were all gabbling inside, like starlings on a foggy morning, and would not let her in. She hurried back to Ra.n.a.ld, fearing treason, and foreseeing the effect of the message upon the monks.

But what could Ra.n.a.ld do? To find out their counsels was impossible for him, or any man in Ely. For the monks could talk Latin, and the men could not. Torfrida alone knew the sacred tongue.

If Torfrida could but listen at the keyhole. Well,--all was fair in war.

And to the Chapter-house door she went, guarded by Ra.n.a.ld and some of his housecarles, and listened, with a beating heart. She heard words now incomprehensible. That men who most of them lived no better than their own serfs; who could have no amount of wealth, not even the hope of leaving that wealth to their children,--should cling to wealth,--struggle, forge, lie, do anything for wealth, to be used almost entirely not for themselves, but for the honor and glory of the convent,--indicates an intensity of corporate feeling, unknown in the outer world then, or now.

The monastery would be ruined! Without this manor, without that wood, without that stone quarry, that fishery,--what would become of them?

But mingled with those words were other words, unfortunately more intelligible to this day,--those of superst.i.tion.

What would St. Etheldreda say? How dare they provoke her wrath? Would she submit to lose her lands? She might do,--what might she not do? Her bones would refuse ever to work a miracle again. They had been but too slack in miracle-working for many years. She might strike the isle with barrenness, the minster with lightning. She might send a flood up the fens. She might--

William the Norman, to do them justice, those valiant monks feared not; for he was man, and could but kill the body. But St. Etheldreda, a virgin G.o.ddess, with all the host of heaven to back her,--might she not, by intercession with powers still higher than her own, destroy both body and soul in h.e.l.l?

"We are betrayed. They are going to send for the Abbot from Angerhale,"

said Torfrida at last, reeling from the door, "All is lost."

"Shall we burst open the door and kill them all?" asked Ra.n.a.ld, simply.

"No, King,--no. They are G.o.d's men; and we have blood enough on our souls."

"We can keep the gates, lest any go out to the King."

"Impossible. They know the isle better than we, and have a thousand arts."

So all they could do was to wait in fear and trembling for Hereward's return, and send Martin Lightfoot off to warn him, wherever he might be.

The monks remained perfectly quiet. The organ droned, the chants wailed, as usual; nothing interrupted the stated order of the services; and in the hall, each day, they met the knights as cheerfully as ever. Greed and superst.i.tion had made cowards of them,--and now traitors.

It was whispered that Abbot Thurstan had returned to the minster; but no man saw him; and so three or four days went on.

Martin found Hereward after incredible labors, and told him all, clearly and shrewdly. The man's manifest insanity only seemed to quicken his wit, and increase his powers of bodily endurance.

Hereward was already on his way home; and never did he and his good men row harder than they rowed that day back to Sutton. He landed, and hurried on with half his men, leaving the rest to disembark the booty. He was anxious as to the temper of the monks. He foresaw all that Torfrida had foreseen. And as for Torfrida herself, he was half mad. Ivo Taillebois's addition to William's message had had its due effect. He vowed even deadlier hate against the Norman than he had ever felt before. He ascended the heights to Sutton. It was his shortest way to Ely. He could not see Aldreth from thence; but he could see Willingham field, and Belsar's hills, round the corner of Haddenham Hill.

The sun was setting long before they reached Ely; but just as he sank into the western fen, Winter stopped, pointing. "Was that the flash of arms?

There, far away, just below Willingham town. Or was it the setting sun upon the ripple of some long water?"

"There is not wind enough for such a ripple," said one. But ere they could satisfy themselves, the sun was down, and all the fen was gray.