Hereward, the Last of the English Part 90

She threw back her veil, and showed to the knights what had been once the famous beauty of Torfrida.

But the beauty was long past away. Her hair was white as snow; her cheeks were fallen in. Her hawk-like features were all sharp and hard. Only in their hollow sockets burned still the great black eyes, so fiercely that all men turned uneasily from her gaze.

"Churl? barbarian?" she said, slowly and quietly, but with an intensity which was more terrible than rage. "Who gives such names to one who was as much better born and better bred than those who now sit here, as he was braver and more terrible than they? The base wood-cutter's son? The upstart who would have been honored had he taken service as yon dead man's groom?"

"Talk to me so, and my stirrup leathers shall make acquaintance with your sides," said Taillebois.

"Keep them for your wife. Churl? Barbarian? There is not a man within this hall who is not a barbarian compared with him. Which of you touched the harp like him? Which of you, like him, could move all hearts with song?

Which of you knows all tongues from Lapland to Provence? Which of you has been the joy of ladies' bowers, the counsellor of earls and heroes, the rival of a mighty king? Which of you will compare yourself with him,--whom you dared not even strike, you and your robber crew, fairly in front, but, skulked round him till he fell pecked to death by you, as Lapland Skratlings peck to death the bear. Ten years ago he swept this hall of such as you, and hung their heads upon yon gable outside; and were he alive but one five minutes again, this hall would be right cleanly swept again! Give me his body,--or bear forever the name of cowards, and Torfrida's curse."

And she fixed her terrible eyes first on one, and then on another, calling them by name.

"Ivo Taillebois,--basest of all--"

"Take the witch's accursed eyes off me!" and he covered his face with his hands. "I shall be overlooked,--planet struck. Hew the witch down! Take her away!"

"Hugh of Evermue,--the dead man's daughter is yours, and the dead man's lands. Are not these remembrances enough of him? Are you so fond of his memory that you need his corpse likewise?"

"Give it her! Give it her!" said he, hanging down his head like a rated cur.

"Ascelin of Lincoln, once Ascelin of Ghent,--there was a time when you would have done--what would you not?--for one glance of Torfrida's eyes.--Stay. Do not deceive yourself, fair sir, Torfrida means to ask no favor of you, or of living man. But she commands you. Do the thing she bids, or with one glance of her eye she sends you childless to your grave."

"Madam! Lady Torfrida! What is there I would not do for you? What have I done now, save avenge your great wrong?"

Torfrida made no answer, but fixed steadily on him eyes which widened every moment.

"But, madam,"--and he turned shrinking from the fancied spell,--"what would you have? The--the corpse? It is in the keeping of--of another lady."

"So?" said Torfrida, quietly. "Leave her to me"; and she swept past them all, and flung open the bower door at their backs, discovering Alftruda sitting by the dead.

The ruffians were so utterly appalled, not only by the false powers of magic, but by veritable powers of majesty and eloquence, that they let her do what she would.

"Out!" cried she, using a short and terrible epithet. "Out, siren, with fairy's face and tail of fiend, and leave the husband with his wife!"

Alftruda looked up, shrieked; and then, with the sudden pa.s.sion of a weak nature, drew a little knife, and sprang up.

Ivo made a coa.r.s.e jest. The Abbot sprang in: "For the sake of all holy things, let there be no more murder here!"

Torfrida smiled, and fixed her snake's eye upon her wretched rival.

"Out! woman, and choose thee a new husband among these French gallants, ere I blast thee from head to foot with the leprosy of Naaman the Syrian."

Alftruda shuddered, and fled shrieking into an inner room.

"Now, knights, give me--that which hangs outside."

Ascelin hurried out, glad to escape. In a minute he returned.

The head was already taken down. A tall lay brother, the moment he had seen it, had climbed the gable, s.n.a.t.c.hed it away, and now sat in a corner of the yard, holding it on his knees, talking to it, chiding it, as if it had been alive. When men had offered to take it, he had drawn a battle-axe from under his frock, and threatened to brain all comers. And the monks had warned off Ascelin, saying that the man was mad, and had Berserk fits of superhuman strength and rage.

"He will give it me!" said Torfrida, and went out.

"Look at that gable, foolish head," said the madman. "Ten years agone, you and I took down from thence another head. O foolish head, to get yourself at last up into that same place! Why would you not be ruled by her, you foolish golden head?"

"Martin!" said Torfrida.

"Take it and comb it, mistress, as you used to do. Comb out the golden locks again, fit to s.h.i.+ne across the battle-field. She has let them get all tangled into elf-knots, that lazy s.l.u.t within."

Torfrida took it from his hands, dry-eyed, and went in.

Then the monks silently took up the bier, and all went forth, and down the hill toward the fen. They laid the corpse within the barge, and slowly rowed away.

And on by Porsad and by Asend.y.k.e, By winding reaches on, and s.h.i.+ning meres Between gray reed-ronds and green alder-beds, A dirge of monks and wail of women rose In vain to Heaven for the last Englishman; Then died far off within the boundless mist, And left the Norman master of the land.

So Torfrida took the corpse home to Crowland, and buried it in the choir, near the blessed martyr St. Waltheof; after which she did not die, but lived on many years, [Footnote: If Ingulf can be trusted, Torfrida died about A. D. 1085.] spending all day in nursing and feeding the Countess G.o.diva, and lying all night on Hereward's tomb, and praying that he might find grace and mercy in that day.

And at last G.o.diva died; and they took her away and buried her with great pomp in her own minster church of Coventry.

And after that Torfrida died likewise; because she had nothing left for which to live. And they laid her in Hereward's grave, and their dust is mingled to this day.

And Leofric the priest lived on to a good old age, and above all things he remembered the deeds and the sins of his master, and wrote them in a book, and this is what remains thereof.

But when Martin Lightfoot died, no man has said; for no man in those days took account of such poor churls and running serving-men.

And Hereward's comrades were all scattered abroad, some maimed, some blinded, some with tongues cut out, to beg by the wayside, or crawl into convents, and then die; while their sisters and daughters, ladies born and bred, were the slaves of grooms and scullions from beyond the sea.

And so, as sang Thorkel Skallason,--

"Cold heart and b.l.o.o.d.y hand Now rule English land." [Footnote: Laing's Heimskringla.]

And after that things waxed even worse and worse, for sixty years and more; all through the reigns of the two Williams, and of Henry Beauclerc, and of Stephen; till men saw visions and portents, and thought that the foul fiend was broken loose on earth. And they whispered oftener and oftener that the soul of Hereward haunted the Bruneswald, where he loved to hunt the dun deer and the roe. And in the Bruneswald, when Henry of Poitou was made abbot, [Footnote: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A. D. 1127.] men saw--let no man think lightly of the marvel which we are about to relate, for it was well known all over the country--upon the Sunday, when men sing, "Exsurge quare, O Domine," many hunters hunting, black, and tall, and loathly, and their hounds were black and ugly with wide eyes, and they rode on black horses and black bucks. And they saw them in the very deer-park of the town of Peterborough, and in all the woods to Stamford; and the monks heard the blasts of the horns which they blew in the night.

Men of truth kept watch upon them, and said that there might be well about twenty or thirty horn-blowers. This was seen and heard all that Lent until Easter, and the Norman monks of Peterborough said how it was Hereward, doomed to wander forever with Apollyon and all his crew, because he had stolen the riches of the Golden Borough: but the poor folk knew better, and said that the mighty outlaw was rejoicing in the chase, blowing his horn for Englishmen to rise against the French; and therefore it was that he was seen first on "Arise, O Lord" Sunday.

But they were so sore trodden down that they could never rise; for the French [Footnote: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A. D. 1137.] had filled the land full of castles. They greatly oppressed the wretched people by making them work at these castles; and when the castles were finished, they filled them with devils and evil men. They took those whom they suspected of having any goods, both men and women, and they put them in prison for their gold and silver, and tortured them with pains unspeakable, for never were any martyrs tormented as these were. They hung some by their feet, and smoked them with foul smoke; some by the thumbs, or by the head, and put burning things on their feet. They put a knotted string round their heads, and twisted it till it went into the brain. They put them in dungeons wherein were adders, and snakes, and toads, and thus wore them out. Some they put into a crucet-house,--that is, into a chest that was short and narrow, and they put sharp stones therein, and crushed the man so that they broke all his bones. There were hateful and grim things called Sachenteges in many of the castles, which two or three men had enough to do to carry. This Sachentege was made thus: It was fastened to a beam, having a sharp iron to go round a man's throat and neck, so that he might no ways sit, nor lie, nor sleep, but he must bear all the iron. Many thousands they wore out with hunger.... They were continually levying a tax from the towns, which they called truserie, and when the wretched townsfolk had no more to give, then burnt they all the towns, so that well mightest thou walk a whole day's journey or ever thou shouldest see a man settled in a town, or its lands tilled....

"Then was corn dear, and flesh, and cheese, and b.u.t.ter, for there was none in the land. Wretched men starved with hunger. Some lived on alms who had been once rich. Some fled the country. Never was there more misery, and never heathens acted worse than these."

For now the sons of the Church's darlings, of the Crusaders whom the Pope had sent, beneath a gonfalon blessed by him, to destroy the liberties of England, turned, by a just retribution, upon that very Norman clergy who had abetted all their iniquities in the name of Rome. "They spared neither church nor churchyard, but took all that was valuable therein, and then burned the church and all together. Neither did they spare the lands of bishops, nor of abbots, nor of priests; but they robbed the monks and clergy, and every man plundered his neighbor as much as he could. If two or three men came riding to a town, all the townsfolk fled before them, and thought that they were robbers. The bishops and clergy were forever cursing them; but this to them was nothing, for they were all accursed and forsworn and reprobate. The earth bare no corn: you might as well have tilled the sea, for all the land was ruined by such deeds, and it was said openly that Christ and his saints slept."

And so was avenged the blood of Harold and his brothers, of Edwin and Morcar, of Waltheof and Hereward.

And those who had the spirit of Hereward in them fled to the merry greenwood, and became bold outlaws, with Robin Hood, Scarlet, and John, Adam Bell, and Clym of the Cleugh, and William of Cloudeslee; and watched with sullen joy the Norman robbers tearing in pieces each other, and the Church who had blest their crime.

And they talked and sung of Hereward, and all his doughty deeds, over the hearth in lone farm-houses, or in the outlaw's lodge beneath the hollins green; and all the burden of their song was, "Ah that Hereward were alive again!" for they knew not that Hereward was alive forevermore; that only his husk and sh.e.l.l lay mouldering there in Crowland choir; that above them, and around them, and in them, destined to raise them out of that bitter bondage, and mould them into a great nation, and the parents of still greater nations in lands as yet unknown, brooded the immortal spirit of Hereward, now purged from all earthly dross, even the spirit of Freedom, which can never die.