Hereward, the Last of the English Part 84

"Not get her?"

"Not without her mother's consent. The la.s.s cares for naught but her."

"Pis.h.!.+ that sorceress? Send for the girl."

Abbot Ulfketyl, forced in his own abbey, great and august lord though he was, to obey any upstart of a Norman priest who came backed by the King and Lanfranc, sent for the la.s.s.

The young outlaw came in,--hawk on fist, and its hood off, for it was a pet,--short, st.u.r.dy, upright, brown-haired, blue-eyed, ill-dressed, with hard hands and sun-burnt face, but with the hawk-eye of her father and her mother, and the hawks among which she was bred. She looked the priest over from head to foot, till he was abashed.

"A Frenchman!" said she, and she said no more.

The priest looked at her eyes, and then at the hawk's eyes. They were disagreeably like each other. He told his errand as courteously as he could, for he was not a bad-hearted man for a Norman priest.

The la.s.s laughed him to scorn. The King's commands? She never saw a king in the greenwood, and cared for none. There was no king in England now, since Sweyn Ulfsson sailed back to Denmark. Who was this Norman William, to sell a free English la.s.s like a colt or a cow? The priest might go back to the slaves of Wess.e.x, and command them if he could; but in the fens, men were free, and la.s.ses too.

The priest was piously shocked and indignant; and began to argue.

She played with her hawk, instead of listening, and then was marching out of the room.

"Your mother," said he, "is a sorceress."

"You are a knave, or set on by knaves. You lie, and you know you lie." And she turned away again.

"She has confessed it."

"You have driven her mad between you, till she will confess anything. I presume you threatened to burn her, as some of you did awhile back." And the young lady made use of words equally strong and true.

The priest was not accustomed to the direct language of the greenwood, and indignant on his own account, threatened, and finally offered to use, force. Whereon there looked up into his face such a demon (so he said) as he never had seen or dreamed of, and said:

"If you lay a finger on me, I will brittle you like any deer." And therewith pulled out a saying-knife, about half as long again as the said priest's hand, being very sharp, so he deposed, down the whole length of one edge, and likewise down his little finger's length of the other.

Not being versed in the terms of English venery, he asked Abbot Ulfketyl what brittling of a deer might mean; and being informed that it was that operation on the carca.s.s of a stag which his countrymen called _eventrer_, and Highland gillies now "gralloching," he subsided, and thought it best to go and consult the young lady's mother.

She, to his astonishment, submitted at once and utterly. The King, and he whom she had called her husband, were very gracious. It was all well. She would have preferred, and the Lady G.o.diva too, after their experience of the world and the flesh, to have devoted her daughter to Heaven in the minster there. But she was unworthy. Who was she, to train a bride for Him who died on Cross? She accepted this as part of her penance, with thankfulness and humility. She had heard that Sir Hugh of Evermue was a gentleman of ancient birth and good prowess, and she thanked the King for his choice. Let the priest tell her daughter that she commanded her to go with him to Winchester. She did not wish to see her. She was stained with many crimes, and unworthy to approach a pure maiden. Besides, it would only cause misery and tears. She was trying to die to the world and to the flesh; and she did not wish to reawaken their power within her. Yes. It was very well. Let the la.s.s go with him."

"Thou art indeed a true penitent," said the priest, his human heart softening him.

"Thou art very much mistaken," said she, and turned away.

The girl, when she heard her mother's command, wept, shrieked, and went.

At least she was going to her father. And from wholesome fear of that same saying-knife, the priest left her in peace all the way to Winchester.

After which, Abbot Ulfketyl went into his lodgings, and burst, like a n.o.ble old n.o.bleman as he was, into bitter tears of rage and shame.

But Torfrida's eyes were as dry as her own sackcloth.

The priest took the letter back to Winchester, and showed it--it may be to Archbishop Lanfranc. But what he said, this chronicler would not dare to say. For he was a very wise man, and a very stanch and strong pillar of the Holy Roman Church. Meanwhile, he was man enough not to require that anything should be added to Torfrida's penance; and that was enough to prove him a man in those days,--at least for a churchman,--as it proved Archbishop or St. Ailred to be, a few years after, in the case of the nun of Watton, to be read in Gale's "Scriptores Anglicaniae." Then he showed the letter to Alftruda.

And she laughed one of her laughs, and said, "I have her at last!"

Then, as it befell, he was forced to shew the letter to Queen Matilda; and she wept over it human tears, such as she, the n.o.ble heart, had been forced to keep many a time before, and said, "The poor soul!--You, Alftruda, woman! does Hereward know of this?"

"No, madam," said Alftruda, not adding that she had taken good care that he should not know.

"It is the best thing which I have heard of him. I should tell him, were it not that I must not meddle with my lord's plans. G.o.d grant him a good delivery, as they say of the poor souls in jail. Well, madam, you have your will at last. G.o.d give you grace thereof, for you have not given Him much chance as yet."

"Your majesty will honor us by coming to the wedding?" asked Alftruda, utterly unabashed.

Matilda the good looked at her with a face of such calm, childlike astonishment, that Alftruda dropped her "fairy neck" at last, and slunk out of the presence like a beaten cur.

William went to the wedding; and swore horrible oaths that they were the handsomest pair he had ever seen. And so Hereward married Alftruda. How Holy Church settled the matter is not said. But that Hereward married Alftruda, under these very circ.u.mstances, may be considered a "historic fact," being vouched for by Gaimar, and by the Peterborough Chronicler.

And doubtless Holy Church contrived that it should happen without sin, if it conduced to her own interest.

And little Torfrida--then, it seems, some sixteen years of age--was married to Hugh of Evermue. She wept and struggled as she was dragged into the church.

"But I do not want to be married. I want to go back to my mother."

"The diabolic instinct may have descended to her," said the priests, "and attracts her to the sorceress. We had best sprinkle her with holy water."

So they sprinkled her with holy water, and used exorcisms. Indeed, the case being an important one, the personages of rank, they brought out from their treasures the ap.r.o.n of a certain virgin saint, and put it round her neck, in hopes of driving out the hereditary fiend.

"If I am led with a halter, I must needs go," said she, with one of her mother's own flashes of wit, and went. "But Lady Alftruda," whispered she, half-way up the church, "I never loved him."

"Behave yourself before the King, or I will whip you till the blood runs."

And so she would, and no one would have wondered in those days.

"I will murder you if you do. But I never even saw him."

"Little fool! And what are you going through, but what I went through before you?"

"You to say that?" gnashed the girl, as another spark of her mother's came out. "And you gaining what--"

"What I waited for for fifteen years," said Alftruda, coolly. "If you have courage and cunning, like me, to wait for fifteen years, you too may have your will likewise."

The pure child shuddered, and was married to Hugh of Evermue, who is not said to have kicked her; and was, according to them of Crowland, a good friend to their monastery, and therefore, doubtless, a good man. Once, says wicked report, he offered to strike her, as was the fas.h.i.+on in those chivalrous days. Whereon she turned upon him like a tigress, and bidding him remember that she was the daughter of Hereward and Torfrida, gave him such a beating that he, not wis.h.i.+ng to draw sword upon her, surrendered at discretion; and they lived all their lives afterwards as happily as most other married people in those times.

CHAPTER XL.

HOW HEREWARD BEGAN TO GET HIS SOUL'S PRICE.

And now behold Hereward at home again, fat with the wages of sin, and not knowing that they are death.

He is once more "Dominus de Brunune c.u.m Marisco," (Lord of Bourne with the fen), "with all returns and liberties and all other things adjacent to the same vill which are now held as a barony from the Lord King of England."