"Too fast! Too fast! Trust lightly, and repent heavily."

"Trust once and for all, or never trust at all," said Torfrida, as she opened the door.

Hereward saw within rich dresses hung on perches round the wall, and chests barred and padlocked.

"These are treasures," said she, "which many a knight and nobleman has coveted. By cunning, by flattery, by threats of force even, have they tried to win what lies here,—and Torfrida herself, too, for the sake of her wealth. But thanks to the Abbot my uncle, Torfrida is still her own mistress, and mistress of the wealth which her forefathers won by sea and land far away in the East. All here is mine,—and if you be but true to me, all mine is yours. Lift the lid for me, it is too heavy for my arms."

Hereward did so; and saw within golden cups and bracelets, horns of ivory and silver, bags of coin, and among them a mail shirt and helmet, on which he fixed at once silent and greedy eyes.

She looked at his face askance, and smiled. "Yes, these are more to Hereward's taste than gold and jewels. And he shall have them. He shall have them as a proof that if Torfrida has set her love upon a worthy knight, she is at least worthy of him; and does not demand, without being able to give in return."

And she took out the armor, and held it up to him.

"This Is the work of dwarfs or enchanters! This was not forged by mortal man! It must have come out of some old cavern, or dragon's hoard!" said Hereward, in astonishment at the extreme delicacy and slightness of the mail-rings, and the richness of the gold and silver with which both hauberk and helm were inlaid.

"Enchanted it is, they say; but its maker, who can tell? My ancestor won it, and by the side of Charles Martel. Listen, and I will tell you how.

"You have heard of fair Provence, where I spent my youth; the land of the sunny south; the land of the fig and the olive, the mulberry and the rose, the tulip and the anemone, and all rich fruits and fair flowers,—the land where every city is piled with temples and theatres and towers as high as heaven, which the old Romans built with their enchantments, and tormented the blessed martyrs therein."

"Heavens, how beautiful you are!" cried Hereward, as her voice shaped itself into a song, and her eyes flashed, at the remembrance of her southern home.

Torfrida was not altogether angry at finding that he was thinking of her, and not of her words.

"Peace, and listen. You know how the Paynim held that land,—the Saracens, to whom Mahound taught all the wisdom of Solomon,—as they teach us in turn," she added in a lower voice.

"And how Charles and his Paladins," [Charles Martel and Charlemagne were perpetually confounded in the legends of the time] "drove them out, and conquered the country again for God and his mother."

"I have heard—" but he did not take his eyes off her face.

"They were in the theatre at Arles, the Saracens, where the blessed martyr St. Trophimus had died in torments; they had set up there their idol of Mahound, and turned the place into a fortress. Charles burnt it over their heads: you see—I have seen—the blackened walls, the blood-stained marbles, to this day. Then they fled into the plain, and there they turned and fought. Under Montmajeur, by the hermit's cell, they fought a summer's day, till they were all slain. There was an Emir among them, black as a raven, clad in magic armor. All lances turned from it, all swords shivered on it. He rode through the press without a wound, while every stroke of his scymitar shore off a head of horse or man. Charles himself rode at him, and smote him with his hammer. They heard the blow in Avignon, full thirty miles away. The flame flashed out from the magic armor a fathom's length, blinding all around; and when they recovered their sight, the enchanter was far away in the battle, killing as he went.

"Then Charles cried, 'Who will stop that devil, whom no steel can wound? Help us, O blessed martyr St. Trophimus, and save the soldiers of the Cross from shame!'

"Then cried Torfrid, my forefather, 'What use in crying to St. Trophimus? He could not help himself, when the Paynim burnt him: and how can he help us? A tough arm is worth a score of martyrs here.'

"And he rode at that Emir, and gript him in his arms. They both fell, and rolled together on the ground; but Torfrid never loosed his hold till he had crushed out his unbaptized soul and sent it to join Mahound in hell.

"Then he took his armor, and brought it home in triumph. But after a while he fell sick of a fever; and the blessed St. Trophimus appeared to him, and told him that it was a punishment for his blasphemy in the battle. So he repented, and vowed to serve the saint all his life. On which he was healed instantly, and fell to religion, and went back to Montmajeur; and there he was a hermit in the cave under the rock, and tended the graves hewn in the living stone, where his old comrades, the Paladins who were slain, sleep side by side round the church of the Holy Cross. But the armor he left here; and he laid a curse upon it, that whosoever of his descendants should lose that armor in fight, should die childless, without a son to wield a sword. And therefore it is that none of his ancestors, valiant as they have been, have dared to put this harness on their backs."

And so ended a story, which Torfrida believed utterly, and Hereward likewise.

"And now, Hereward mine, dare you wear that magic armor, and face old Torfrid's curse?"

"What dare I not?"

"Think. If you lose it, in you your race must end."

"Let it end. I accept the curse."

And he put the armor on.

But he trembled as he did it. Atheism and superstition go too often hand in hand; and godless as he was, sceptical of Providence itself, and much more of the help of saint or angel, still the curse of the old warrior, like the malice of a witch or a demon, was to him a thing possible, probable, and formidable.

She looked at him in pride and exultation.

"It is yours,—the invulnerable harness! Wear it in the forefront of the battle! And if weapon wound you through it, may I, as punishment for my lie, suffer the same upon my tender body,—a wound for every wound of yours, my knight!" [Footnote: "Volo enim in meo tale quid nunc perpeti corpore semel, quicquid eas ferrei vel e metallo excederet."]

And after that they sat side by side, and talked of love with all honor and honesty, never heeding the old hag, who crooned to herself in her barbarian tongue,—

"Quick thaw, long frost, Quick joy, long pain, Soon found, soon lost, You will take your gift again."



CHAPTER XI.

HOW THE HOLLANDERS TOOK HEREWARD FOR A MAGICIAN.

Of this weary Holland war which dragged itself on, campaign after campaign, for several years, what need to tell? There was, doubtless, the due amount of murder, plunder, burning, and worse; and the final event was certain from the beginning. It was a struggle between civilized and disciplined men, armed to the teeth, well furnished with ships and military engines, against poor simple folk in "felt coats stiffened with tar or turpentine, or in very short jackets of hide," says the chronicler, "who fought by threes, two with a crooked lance and three darts each, and between them a man with a sword or an axe, who held his shield before those two;—a very great multitude, but in composition utterly undisciplined," who came down to the sea-coast, with carts and wagons, to carry off the spoils of the Flemings, and bade them all surrender at discretion, and go home again after giving up Count Robert and Hereward, with the "tribunes of the brigades," to be put to death, as valiant South Sea islanders might have done; and then found themselves as sheep to the slaughter before the cunning Hereward, whom they esteemed a magician on account of his craft and his invulnerable armor.

So at least says Leofric's paraphrast, who tells long, confused stories of battles and campaigns, some of them without due regard to chronology; for it is certain that the brave Frisians could not on Robert's first landing have "feared lest they should be conquered by foreigners, as they had heard the English were by the French," because that event had not then happened.

And so much for the war among the Meres of Scheldt.



CHAPTER XII.

HOW HEREWARD TURNED BERSERK.

Torfrida's heart misgave her that first night as to the effects of her exceeding frankness. Her pride in the first place was somewhat wounded; she had dreamed of a knight who would worship her as his queen, hang on her smile, die at her frown; and she had meant to bring Hereward to her feet as such a slave, in boundless gratitude; but had he not rather held his own, and brought her to his feet, by assuming her devotion as his right? And if he assumed that, how far could she trust him not to abuse his claim? Was he quite as perfect, seen close, as seen afar off? And now that the intoxication of that meeting had passed off, she began to remember more than one little fault which she would have gladly seen mended. Certain roughnesses of manner which contrasted unfavorably with the polish (merely external though it was) of the Flemish and Norman knights; a boastful self-sufficiency, too, which bordered on the ludicrous at whiles even in her partial eyes; which would be a matter of open laughter to the knights of the Court. Besides, if they laughed at him, they would laugh at her for choosing him. And then wounded vanity came in to help wounded pride; and she sat over the cold embers till almost dawn of day, her head between her hands, musing sadly, and half wishing that the irrevocable yesterday had never come.

But when, after a few months, Hereward returned from his first campaign in Holland, covered with glory and renown, all smiles, and beauty, and health, and good-humor, and gratitude for the magic armor which had preserved him unhurt, then Torfrida forgot all her fears, and thought herself the happiest maid alive for four-and-twenty hours at least.

And then came back, and after that again and again, the old fears. Gradually she found out that the sneers which she had heard at English barbarians were not altogether without ground.

Not only had her lover's life been passed among half-brutal and wild adventurers; but, like the rest of his nation, he had never felt the influence of that classic civilization without which good manners seem, even to this day, almost beyond the reach of the white man. Those among whom she had been brought up, whether soldiers or clerks, were probably no nobler or purer at heart—she would gladly have believed them far less so—than Hereward; but the merest varnish of Roman civilization had given a charm to their manners, a wideness of range to their thoughts, which Hereward had not.

Especially when he had taken too much to drink,—which he did, after the Danish fashion, far oftener than the rest of Baldwin's men,—he grew rude, boastful, quarrelsome. He would chant his own doughty deeds, and "gab," as the Norman word was, in painful earnest, while they gabbed only in sport, and outvied each other in impossible fanfaronades, simply to laugh down a fashion which was held inconsistent with the modesty of a true knight. Bitter it was to her to hear him announcing to the company, not for the first or second time, how he had slain the Cornish giant, whose height increased by a foot at least every time he was mentioned; and then to hear him answered by some smart, smooth-shaven youth, who, with as much mimicry of his manner as he dared to assume, boasted of having slain in Araby a giant with two heads, and taken out of his two mouths the two halves of the princess whom he was devouring, which being joined together afterwards by the prayers of a holy hermit, were delivered back safe and sound to her father the King of Antioch. And more bitter still, to hear Hereward angrily dispute the story, unaware (at least at first) that he was being laughed at.

Then she grew sometimes cold, sometimes contemptuous, sometimes altogether fierce; and shed bitter tears in secret, when she was complimented on the modesty of her young savage.

But she was a brave maiden; and what was more, she loved him with all her heart. Else why endure bitter words for his sake? And she set herself to teach and train the wild outlaw into her ideal of a very perfect knight.

She talked to him of modesty and humility, the root of all virtues; of chivalry and self-sacrifice; of respect to the weak, and mercy to the fallen; of devotion to God, and awe of His commandments. She set before him the example of ancient heroes and philosophers, of saints and martyrs; and as much awed him by her learning as by the new world of higher and purer morality which was opened for the first time to the wandering Viking.

And he drank it all in. Taught by a woman who loved him, he could listen to humiliating truths, which he would have sneered at, had they come from the lips of a hermit or a priest. Often he rebelled; often he broke loose, and made her angry, and himself ashamed: but the spell was on him,—a far surer, as well as purer spell than any love-potion of which foolish Torfrida had ever dreamed,—the only spell which can really civilize man,—that of woman's tact and woman's purity.

But there were relapses, as was natural. The wine at Robert the Frison's table was often too good; and then Hereward's tongue was loosed, and Torfrida justly indignant. And one evening there came a very serious relapse, and out of which arose a strange adventure.

For one day the Great Marquis sent for his son to Bruges, ere he set out for another campaign in Holland; and made him a great feast, to which he invited Torfrida and her mother. For Adela of France, the Queen Countess, had heard so much of Torfrida's beauty, that she must needs have her as one of her bower-maidens; and her mother, who was an old friend of Adela's, of course was highly honored by such a promotion for her daughter.

So they went to Bruges, and Hereward and his men went of course; and they feasted and harped and sang; and the saying was fulfilled,—

"'Tis merry in the hall When beards wag all."

But the only beard which wagged in that hall was Hereward's; for the Flemings, like the Normans, prided themselves on their civilized and smooth-shaven chins, and laughed (behind his back) at Hereward, who prided himself on keeping his beautiful English beard, with locks of gold which, like his long golden hair, were combed and curled daily, after the fashion of the Anglo-Danes.

But Hereward's beard began to wag somewhat too fast, as he sat by Torfrida's side, when some knight near began to tell of a wonderful mare, called Swallow, which was to be found in one of the islands of the Scheldt, and was famous through all the country round; insinuating, moreover, that Hereward might as well have brought that mare home with him as a trophy.

Hereward answered, in his boasting vein, that he would bring home that mare, or aught else that he had a liking to.

"You will find it not so easy. Her owner, they say, is a mighty strong churl of a horse-breeder, Dirk Hammerhand by name; and as for cutting his throat, that you must not do; for he has been loyal to Countess Gertrude, and sent her horses whenever she needed."

"One may pick a fair quarrel with him nevertheless."

"Then you must bide such a buffet as you never abode before. They say his arm has seven men's strength; and whosoever visits him, he challenges to give and take a blow; but every man that has taken a blow as yet has never needed another."

"Hereward will have need of his magic head-piece, if he tries that adventure," quoth another.

"Ay," retorted the first speaker; "but the helmet may stand the rap well enough, and yet the brains inside be the worse."

"Not a doubt. I knew a man once, who was so strong, that he would shake a nut till the kernel went to powder, and yet never break the shell."

"That is a lie!" quoth Hereward. And so it was, and told purposely to make him expose himself.

Whereon high words followed, which Torfrida tried in vain to stop. Hereward was flushed with ire and scorn.

"Magic armor, forsooth!" cried he at last. "What care I for armor or for magic? I will wager to you"—"my armor," he was on the point of saying, but he checked himself in time—"any horse in my stable, that I go in my shirt to Scaldmariland, and bring back that mare single-handed."

"Hark to the Englishman. He has turned Berserk at last, like his forefathers. You will surely start in a pair of hose as well, or the ladies will be shamed."

And so forth, till Torfrida was purple with shame, and wished herself fathoms deep; and Adela of France called sternly from the head of the table to ask what the wrangling meant.

"It is only the English Berserker, the Lady Torfrida's champion," said some one, in his most courteous tone, "who is not yet as well acquainted with the customs of knighthood as that fair lady hopes to make him hereafter."

"Torfrida's champion?" asked Adela, in a tone of surprise, if not scorn.

"If any knight quarrels with my Hereward, he quarrels with Robert himself!" thundered Count Robert. "Silence!"

And so the matter was hushed up.

The banquet ended; and they walked out into the garden to cool their heads, and play at games, and dance.

Torfrida avoided Hereward: but he, with the foolish pertinacity of a man who knows he has had too much wine, and yet pretends to himself that he has not, would follow her, and speak to her.

She turned away more than once. At last she was forced to speak to him.

"So! You have made me a laughing-stock to these knights. You have scorned at my gifts. You have said—and before these men, too—that you need neither helm nor hauberk. Give me them back, then, Berserker as you are, and go sleep off your wine."

"That will I," laughed Hereward boisterously.

"You are tipsy," said she, "and do not know what you say."

"You are angry, and do not know what you say. Hearken proud lass. I will take care of one thing, and that is, that you shall speak the truth."

"Did I not say that you were tipsy?"

"Pish! You said that I was a Berserker. And truth you shall speak; for baresark I go to-morrow to the war, and baresark I win that mare or die."

"That will be very fit for you."

And the two turned haughtily from each other.

Ere Torfrida went to bed that night, there was a violent knocking. Angry as she was, she was yet anxious enough to hurry out of her chamber, and open the door herself.

Martin Lightfoot stood there with a large leather case, which he flung at her feet somewhat unceremoniously.

"There is some gear of yours," said he, as it clanged and rattled on the floor.

"What do you mean, man?"

"Only that my master bid me say that he cares as little for his own life as you do." And he turned away.

She caught him by the arm:—

"What is the meaning of this? What is in this mail?"

"You should know best. If young folks cannot be content when they are well off, they will go farther and fare worse," says Martin Lightfoot. And he slipt from her grasp and fled into the night.

She took the mail to her room and opened it. It contained the magic armor.

All her anger was melted away. She cried; she blamed herself. He would be killed; his blood would be on her head. She would have carried it back to him with her own hands; she would have entreated him on her knees to take it back. But how face the courtiers? and how find him? Very probably, too, he was by that time hopelessly drunk. And at that thought she drew herself into herself, and trying to harden her heart again, went to bed, but not to sleep; and bitterly she cried as she thought over the old hag's croon:—

"Quick joy, long pain, You will take your gift again."

It might have been five o'clock the next morning when the clarion rang down the street. She sprang up and drest herself quickly; but never more carefully or gayly. She heard the tramp of horse-hoofs. He was moving a-field early, indeed. Should she go to the window to bid him farewell? Should she hide herself in just anger?

She looked out stealthily through the blind of the little window in the gable. There rode down the street Robert le Frison in full armor, and behind him, knight after knight, a wall of shining steel. But by his side rode one bare-headed, his long yellow curls floating over his shoulders. His boots had golden spurs, a gilt belt held up his sword; but his only dress was a silk shirt and silk hose. He laughed and sang, and made his horse caracol, and tossed his lance in the air, and caught it by the point, like Taillefer at Hastings, as he passed under the window.

She threw open the blind, careless of all appearances. She would have called to him: but the words choked her; and what should she say?

He looked up boldly, and smiled.

"Farewell, fair lady mine. Drunk I was last night: but not so drunk as to forget a promise."

And he rode on, while Torfrida rushed away and broke into wild weeping.



CHAPTER XIII.

HOW HEREWARD WON MARE SWALLOW.

On a bench at the door of his high-roofed wooden house sat Dirk Hammerhand, the richest man in Walcheren. From within the house sounded the pleasant noise of slave-women, grinding and chatting at the handquern; from without, the pleasant noise of geese and fowls without number. And as he sat and drank his ale, and watched the herd of horses in the fen, he thought himself a happy man, and thanked his Odin and Thor that owing to his princely supplies of horses to Countess Gertrude, Robert the Frison and his Christian Franks had not harried him to the bare walls, as they would probably do ere all was over.

As he looked at the horses, some half-mile off, he saw a strange stir among them. They began whinnying and pawing round a four-footed thing in the midst, which might be a badger, or a wolf,—though both were very uncommon in that pleasant isle of Walcheren; but which plainly had no business there. Whereon he took up a mighty staff, and strode over the fen to see.

He found neither wolf nor badger; but to his exceeding surprise, a long lean man, clothed in ragged horse-skins, whinnying and neighing exactly like a horse, and then stooping to eat grass like one. He advanced to do the first thing which came into his head, namely to break the man's back with his staff, and ask him afterwards who he might be. But ere he could strike, the man or horse kicked up with his hind legs in his face, and then springing on to the said hind legs ran away with extraordinary swiftness some fifty yards; and then went down on all-fours and began grazing again.

"Beest thou man or devil?" cried Dirk, somewhat frightened.

The thing looked up. The face at least was human.

"Art thou a Christian man?" asked it in bad Frisian, intermixed with snorts and neighs.

"What's that to thee?" growled Dirk; and began to wish a little that he was one, having heard that the sign of the cross was of great virtue in driving away fiends.

"Thou art not Christian. Thou believest in Thor and Odin? Then there is hope,"

"Hope of what?" Dirk was growing more and more frightened.

"Of her, my sister! Ah, my sister, can it be that I shall find thee at last, after ten thousand miles, and thirty years of woeful wandering?"

"I have no man's sister here. At least, my wife's brother was killed—"

"I speak not of a sister in a woman's shape. Mine, alas!—O woeful prince, O more woeful princess!—eats the herb of the field somewhere in the shape of a mare, as ugly as she was once beautiful, but swifter than the swallow on the wing."

"I've none such here," quoth Dirk, thoroughly frightened, and glancing uneasily at mare Swallow.

"You have not? Alas, wretched me! It was prophesied to me, by the witch, that I should find her in the field of one who worshipped the old gods; for had she come across a holy priest, she had been a woman again, long ago. Whither must I wander afresh!" And the thing began weeping bitterly, and then ate more grass.

"I—that is—thou poor miserable creature," said Dirk, half pitying, half wishing to turn the subject, "leave off making a beast of thyself awhile, and tell me who thou art."

"I have made no beast of myself, most noble Earl of the Frisians, for so you doubtless are. I was made a beast of,—a horse of, by an enchanter of a certain land, and my sister a mare."

"Thou dost not say so!" quoth Dirk, who considered such an event quite possible.

"I was a prince of the county of Alboronia, which lies between Cathay and the Mountains of the Moon, as fair once as I am foul now, and only less fair than my lost sister; and, by the enchantments of a cruel magician, we became what we are."

"But thou art not a horse, at all events?"

"Am I not? Thou knowest, then, more of me than I do of myself,"—and it ate more grass. "But hear the rest of my story. My hapless sister was sold away, with me, to a merchant; but I, breaking loose from him, fled until I bathed in a magic fountain. At once I recovered my man's shape, and was rejoicing therein, when out of the fountain rose a fairy more beautiful than an elf, and smiled upon me with love.

"She asked me my story, and I told it. And when it was told, 'Wretch!' she cried, 'and coward, who hast deserted thy sister in her need. I would have loved thee, and made thee immortal as myself; but now thou shalt wander, ugly, and eating grass, clothed in the horse-hide which has just dropped from thy limbs, till thou shalt find thy sister, and bring her to bathe, like thee, in this magic well.'"

"All good spirits help us! And you are really a prince?"

"As surely," cried the thing, with a voice of sudden rapture, "as that mare is my sister"; and he rushed at mare Swallow. "I see, I see, my mother's eyes, my father's nose—"

"He must have been a chuckle-headed king that, then," grinned Dirk to himself. "The mare's nose is as big as a buck-basket. But how can she be a princess, man,—prince, I mean? she has a foal running by her here."

"A foal?" said the thing, solemnly. "Let me behold it. Alas, alas, my sister! Thy tyrant's threat has come true, that thou shouldst be his bride whether thou wouldst or not. I see, I see in the features of thy son his hated lineaments."

"Why he must be as like a horse, then, as your father. But this will not do, Master Horse-man; I know that foal's pedigree better than I do my own."

"Man, man, simple, though honest! Hast thou never heard of the skill of the enchanter of the East? How they transform their victims at night back again into human shape, and by day into the shape of beasts again?"

"Yes—well—I know that—"

"And do you not see how you are deluded? Every night, doubt not, that mare and foal take their human shape again; and every night, perhaps, that foul enchanter visits in your fen, perhaps in your very stable, his wretched and perhaps unwilling bride."

"An enchanter in my stable? That is an ugly guest. But no. I've been into the stables fifty times, to see if that mare was safe. Mare was mare, and colt was colt, Mr. Prince, if I have eyes to see."

"And what are eyes against enchantments? The moment you opened the door, the spell was cast over them again. You ought to thank your stars that no worse has happened yet; that the enchanter, in fleeing, has not wrung your neck as he went out, or cast a spell on you, which will fire your barns, lame your geese, give your fowls the pip, your horses the glanders, your cattle the murrain, your children the St. Vitus' dance, your wife the creeping palsy, and yourself the chalk-stones in all your fingers."

"The Lord have mercy on me! If the half of this be true, I will turn Christian. I will send for a priest, and be baptized to-morrow!"

"O my sister, my sister! Dost thou not know me? Dost thou answer my caresses with kicks? Or is thy heart, as well as thy body, so enchained by that cruel necromancer, that thou preferest to be his, and scornest thine own salvation, leaving me to eat grass till I die?"

"I say, Prince,—I say,—What would you have a man to do? I bought the mare honestly, and I have kept her well. She can't say aught against me on that score. And whether she be princess or not, I'm loath to part with her."

"Keep her then, and keep with her the curse of all the saints and angels. Look down, ye holy saints" (and the thing poured out a long string of saints' names), "and avenge this catholic princess, kept in bestial durance by an unbaptized heathen! May his—"

"Don't! don't!" roared Dirk. "And don't look at me like that" (for he feared the evil eye), "or I'll brain you with my staff!"

"Fool, if I have lost a horse's figure, I have not lost his swiftness. Ere thou couldst strike, I should have run a mile and back, to curse thee afresh." And the thing ran round him, and fell on all-fours again, and ate grass.

"Mercy, mercy! And that is more than I ever asked yet of man. But it is hard," growled he, "that a man should lose his money, because a rogue sells him a princess in disguise."

"Then sell her again; sell her, as thou valuest thy life, to the first Christian man thou meetest. And yet no. What matters? Ere a month be over, the seven years' enchantment will have passed, and she will return to her own shape, with her son, and vanish from thy farm, leaving thee to vain repentance, and so thou wilt both lose thy money and get her curse. Farewell, and my malison abide with thee!"

And the thing, without another word, ran right away, neighing as it went, leaving Dirk in a state of abject terror.

He went home. He cursed the mare, he cursed the man who sold her, he cursed the day he saw her, he cursed the day he was born. He told his story with exaggerations and confusions in plenty to all in the house; and terror fell on them likewise. No one, that evening, dare go down into the fen to drive the horses up; and Dirk got very drunk, went to bed, and trembled there all night (as did the rest of the household), expecting the enchanter to enter on a flaming fire-drake, at every howl of the wind.

The next morning, as Dirk was going about his business with a doleful face, casting stealthy glances at the fen, to see if the mysterious mare was still there, and a chance of his money still left, a man rode up to the door.

He was poorly clothed, with a long rusty sword by his side. A broad felt hat, long boots, and a haversack behind his saddle, showed him to be a traveller, seemingly a horse-dealer; for there followed him, tied head and tail, a brace of sorry nags.

"Heaven save all here," quoth he, making the sign of the cross. "Can any good Christian give me a drink of milk?"

"Ale, if thou wilt," said Dirk. "But what art thou, and whence?"

On any other day, he would have tried to coax his guest into trying a buffet with him for his horse and clothes; but this morning his heart was heavy with the thought of the enchanted mare, and he welcomed the chance of selling her to the stranger.

"We are not very fond of strangers about here, since these Flemings have been harrying our borders. If thou art a spy, it will be worse for thee."

"I am neither spy nor Fleming; but a poor servant of the Lord Bishop of Utrecht's, buying a garron or two for his lordship's priests. As for these Flemings, may St. John Baptist save from them both me and you. Do you know of any man who has horses to sell hereabouts?"

"There are horses in the fen yonder," quoth Dirk, who knew that churchmen were likely to give a liberal price, and pay in good silver.

"I saw them as I rode up. And a fine lot they are; but of too good a stamp for my short purse, or for my holy master's riding,—a fat priest likes a quiet nag, my master."

"Humph. Well, if quietness is what you need, there is a mare down there, a child might ride her with a thread of wool. But as for price,—and she has a colt, too, running by her."

"Ah?" quoth the horseman. "Well, your Walcheren folk make good milk, that's certain. A colt by her? That's awkward. My Lord does not like young horses; and it would be troublesome, too, to take the thing along with me."

The less anxious the dealer seemed to buy, the more anxious grew Dirk to sell; but he concealed his anxiety, and let the stranger turn away, thanking him for his drink.

"I say!" he called after him. "You might look at her as you ride past the herd."

The stranger assented, and they went down into the fen, and looked over the precious mare, whose feats were afterwards sung by many an English fireside, or in the forest, beneath the hollins green, by such as Robin Hood and his merry men. The ugliest, as well as the swiftest, of mares, she was, say the old chroniclers; and it was not till the stranger had looked twice at her, that he forgot her great chuckle head, greyhound-flanks, and drooping hind-quarters, and began to see the great length of those same quarters,—the thighs let down into the hocks, the arched loin, the extraordinary girth through the saddle, the sloping shoulder, the long arms, the flat knees, the large, well-set hoofs, and all the other points which showed her strength and speed, and justified her fame.

"She might carry a big man like you through the mud," said he, carelessly, "but as for pace, one cannot expect that with such a chuckle head. And if one rode her through a town, the boys would call after one, 'All head and no tail.' Why, I can't see her tail for her quarters, it is so ill set on."

"Ill set on, or none," said Dirk, testily; "don't go to speak against her pace till you have seen it. Here, lass!"

Dirk was, in his heart, rather afraid of the princess; but he was comforted when she came up to him like a dog.

"She's as sensible as a woman," said he; and then grumbled to himself, "may be she knows I mean to part with her."

"Lend me your saddle," said he to the stranger.

The stranger did so; and Dirk mounting galloped her in a ring. There was no doubt of her powers, as soon as she began to move.

"I hope you won't remember this against me, madam," said Dirk, as soon as he got out of the stranger's hearing. "I can't do less than sell you to a Christian. And certainly I have been as good a master to you as if I'd known who you were; but if you wish to stay with me you've only to kick me off, and say so, and I'm yours to command."

"Well, she can gallop a bit," said the stranger, as Dirk pulled her up and dismounted; "but an ugly brute she is nevertheless, and such a one as I should not care to ride, for I am a gay man among the ladies. However, what is your price?"

Dirk named twice as much as he would have taken.

"Half that, you mean." And the usual haggle began.

"Tell thee what," said Dirk at last, "I am a man who has his fancies; and this shall be her price; half thy bid, and a box on the ear."

The demon of covetousness had entered Dirk's heart. What if he got the money, brained or at least disabled the stranger, and so had a chance of selling the mare a second time to some fresh comer?

"Thou art a strange fellow," quoth the horse-dealer. "But so be it."

Dirk chuckled. "He does not know," thought he, "that he has to do with Dirk Hammerhand," and he clenched his fist in anticipation of his rough joke.

"There," quoth the stranger, counting out the money carefully, "is thy coin. And there—is thy box on the ear."

And with a blow which rattled over the fen, he felled Dirk Hammerhand to the ground.

He lay senseless for a moment, and then looked wildly round. His jaw was broken.

"Villain!" groaned he. "It was I who was to give the buffet, not thou!"

"Art mad?" asked the stranger, as he coolly picked up the coins, which Dirk had scattered in his fall. "It is the seller's business to take, and the buyer's to give."

And while Dirk roared for help in vain he leapt on mare Swallow and rode off shouting,

"Aha! Dirk Hammerhand! So you thought to knock a hole in my skull, as you have done to many a better man than yourself. He is a lucky man who never meets his match, Dirk. I shall give your love to the Enchanted Prince, my faithful serving-man, whom they call Martin Lightfoot."

Dirk cursed the day he was born. Instead of the mare and colt, he had got the two wretched garrons which the stranger had left, and a face which made him so tender of his own teeth, that he never again offered to try a buffet with a stranger.



CHAPTER XIV.

HOW HEREWARD RODE INTO BRUGES LIKE A BEGGARMAN.

The spring and summer had passed, and the autumn was almost over, when great news came to the Court of Bruges, where Torfrida was now a bower-maiden.

The Hollanders had been beaten till they submitted; at least for the present. There was peace, at least for the present, through all the isles of Scheldt; and more than all, the lovely Countess Gertrude had resolved to reward her champion by giving him her hand, and the guardianship of her lands and the infant son.

And Hereward?

From him, or of him, there was no word. That he was alive and fighting, was all the messenger could say.

Then Robert came back to Bruges, with a gallant retinue, leading home his bride. And there met him his father and mother, and his brother of Mons, and Richilda the beautiful and terrible sorceress,—who had not yet stained her soul with those fearful crimes which she had expiated by fearful penances in after years, when young Arnoul, the son for whom she had sold her soul, lay dead through the very crimes by which she had meant to make him a mighty prince. And Torfrida went out with them to meet Count Robert, and looked for Hereward, till her eyes were ready to fall out of her head. But Hereward was not with them.

"He must be left behind, commanding the army," thought she. "But he might have sent one word!"

There was a great feast that day, of course; and Torfrida sat thereat: but she could not eat. Nevertheless she was too proud to let the knights know what was in her heart; so she chatted and laughed as gayly as the rest, watching always for any word of Hereward. But none mentioned his name.

The feast was long; the ladies did not rise till nigh bedtime; and then the men drank on.

They went up to the Queen-Countess's chamber; where a solemn undressing of that royal lady usually took place.

The etiquette was this. The Queen-Countess sat in her chair of state in the midst, till her shoes were taken off, and her hair dressed for the night. Right and left of her, according to their degrees, sat the other great ladies; and behind each of them, where they could find places, the maidens.

It was Torfrida's turn to take off the royal shoes; and she advanced into the middle of the semicircle, slippers in hand.

"Stop there!" said the Countess-Queen.

Whereat Torfrida stopped, very much frightened.

"Countesses and ladies," said the mistress. "There are, in Provence and the South, what I wish there were here in Flanders,—Courts of Love, at which all offenders against the sacred laws of Venus and Cupid are tried by an assembly of their peers, and punished according to their deserts."

Torfrida turned scarlet.

"I know not why we, countesses and ladies, should have less knowledge of the laws of love than those gayer dames of the South, whose blood runs—to judge by her dark hair—in the veins of yon fair maid."

There was a silence. Torfrida was the most beautiful woman in the room; more beautiful than even Richilda the terrible: and therefore there were few but were glad to see her—as it seemed—in trouble.

Torfrida's mother began whimpering, and praying to six or seven saints at once. But nobody marked her,—possibly not even the saints; being preoccupied with Torfrida.

"I hear, fair maid,—for that you are that I will do you the justice to confess,—that you are old enough to be married this four years since."

Torfrida stood like a stone, frightened out of her wits, plentiful as they were.

"Why are you not married?"

There was, of course, no answer.

"I hear that knights have fought for you; lost their lives for you."

"I did not bid them," gasped Torfrida, longing that the floor would open, and swallow up the Queen-Countess and all her kin and followers, as it did for the enemies of the blessed Saint Dunstan, while he was arguing with them in an upper room at Calne.

"And that the knight of St. Valeri, to whom you gave your favor, now lies languishing of wounds got in your cause."

"I—I did not bid him fight," gasped Torfrida, now wishing that the floor would open and swallow up herself.

"And that he who overthrew the knight of St. Valeri,—to whom you gave that favor, and more—"

"I gave him nothing a maiden might not give," cried Torfrida, so fiercely that the Queen-Countess recoiled somewhat.

"I never said that you did, girl. Your love you gave him. Can you deny that?"

Torfrida laughed bitterly: her Southern blood was rising.

"I put my love out to nurse, instead of weaning it, as many a maiden has done before me. When my love cried for hunger and cold, I took it back again to my own bosom: and whether it has lived or died there, is no one's matter but my own."

"Hunger and cold? I hear that him to whom you gave your love you drove out to the cold, bidding him go fight in his bare shirt, if he wished to win your love."

"I did not. He angered me—he—" and Torfrida found herself in the act of accusing Hereward.

She stopped instantly.

"What more, Majesty? If this be true, what more may not be true of such a one as I? I submit myself to your royal grace."

"She has confessed. What punishment, ladies, does she deserve? Or, rather, what punishment would her cousins of Provence inflict, did we send her southward, to be judged by their Courts of Love?"

One lady said one thing, one another. Some spoke cruelly, some worse than cruelly; for they were coarse ages, the ages of faith; and ladies said things then in open company which gentlemen would be ashamed to say in private now.

"Marry her to a fool," said Richilda, at last, bitterly.

"That is too common a misfortune," answered the lady of France. "If we did no more to her, she might grow as proud as her betters."

Adela knew that her daughter-in-law considered her husband a fool; and was somewhat of the same opinion, though she hated Richilda.

"No," said she; "we will do more. We will marry her to the first man who enters the castle."

Torfrida looked at her mistress to see if she were mad. But the Countess-Queen was serene and sane. Then Torfrida's southern heat and northern courage burst forth.

"You—marry—me—to—" said she, slowly, with eyes so fierce, and lips so vivid, that Richilda herself quailed.

There was a noise of shouting and laughing in the court below, which made all turn and listen.

The next moment a serving-man came in, puzzled and inclined to laugh.

"May it please your Majesty, here is the strangest adventure. There is ridden into the castle-yard a beggar-man, with scarce a shirt to his back, on a great ugly mare, with a foal running by her, and a fool behind him, carrying lance and shield. And he says that he is come to fight any knight of the Court, ragged as he stands, for the fairest lady in the Court, be she who she may, if she have not a wedded husband already."

"And what says my Lord Marquis?"

"That it is a fair challenge, and a good adventure; and that fight he shall, if any man will answer his defiance."

"And I say, tell my Lord the Marquis, that fight he shall not: for he shall have the fairest maiden in this Court for the trouble of carrying her away; and that I, Adela of France, will give her to him. So let that beggar dismount, and be brought up hither to me."

There was silence again. Torfrida looked round her once more, to see whether or not she was dreaming, and whether there was one human being to whom she could appeal. Her mother sat praying and weeping in a corner. Torfrida looked at her with one glance of scorn, which she confessed and repented, with bitter tears, many a year after, in a foreign land; and then turned to bay with the spirit of her old Paladin ancestor, who choked the Emir at Mont Majeur.

Married to a beggar! It was a strange accident; and an ugly one; and a great cruelty and wrong. But it was not impossible, hardly improbable, in days when the caprice of the strong created accidents, and when cruelty and wrong went for nothing, even with very kindly honest folk. So Torfrida faced the danger, as she would have faced that of a kicking horse, or a flooded ford; and like the nut-brown bride,

"She pulled out a little penknife, That was both keen and sharp."

and considered that the beggar-man could wear no armor, and that she wore none either. For if she succeeded in slaying that beggar-man, she might need to slay herself after, to avoid being—according to the fashion of those days—burnt alive.

So when the arras was drawn back, and that beggar-man came into the room, instead of shrieking, fainting, hiding, or turning, she made three steps straight toward him, looking him in the face like a wild-cat at bay. Then she threw up her arms; and fell upon his neck.

It was Hereward himself. Filthy, ragged: but Hereward.

His shirt was brown with gore, and torn with wounds; and through its rents showed more than one hardly healed scar. His hair and beard was all in elf-locks; and one heavy cut across the head had shorn not only hair, but brain-pan, very close. Moreover, any nose, save that of Love, might have required perfume.

But Hereward it was; and regardless of all beholders, she lay upon his neck, and never stirred nor spoke.

"I call you to witness, ladies," cried the Queen-Countess, "that I am guiltless. She has given herself to this beggar-man of her own free will. What say you?" And she turned to Torfrida's mother.

Torfrida's mother only prayed and whimpered.

"Countesses and Ladies," said the Queen-Countess, "there will he two weddings to-morrow. The first will be that of my son Robert and my pretty Lady Gertrude here. The second will be that of my pretty Torfrida and Hereward."

"And the second bride," said the Countess Gertrude, rising and taking Torfrida in her arms, "will be ten times prettier than the first. There, sir, I have done all you asked of me. Now go and wash yourself."

* * * * *

"Hereward," said Torfrida, a week after, "and did you really never change your shirt all that time?"

"Never. I kept my promise."

"But it must have been very nasty."

"Well, I bathed now and then."

"But it must have been very cold."

"I am warm enough now."

"But did you never comb your hair, neither?"

"Well, I won't say that. Travellers find strange bed-fellows. But I had half a mind never to do it at all, just to spite you."

"And what matter would it have been to me?"

"O, none. It is only a Danish fashion we have of keeping clean."

"Clean! You were dirty enough when you came home. How silly you were! If you had sent me but one word!"

"You would have fancied me beaten, and scolded me all over again. I know your ways now, Torfrida."



CHAPTER XV.

HOW EARL TOSTI GODWINSSON CAME TO ST. OMER.

The winter passed in sweet madness; and for the first time in her life, Torfrida regretted the lengthening of the days, and the flowering of the primroses, and the return of the now needless wryneck; for they warned her that Hereward must forth again, to the wars in Scaldmariland, which had broken out again, as was to be expected, as soon as Count Robert and his bride had turned their backs.

And Hereward, likewise, for the first time in his life, was loath to go to war. He was, doubtless, rich enough in this world's goods. Torfrida herself was rich, and seems to have had the disposal of her own property, for her mother is not mentioned in connection therewith. Hereward seems to have dwelt in her house at St. Omer as long as he remained in Flanders. He had probably amassed some treasure of his own by the simple, but then most aristocratic, method of plunder. He had, too, probably, grants of land in Holland from the Frison, the rents whereof were not paid as regularly as might be. Moreover, as "Magister Militum," ("Master of the Knights,") he had, it is likely, pay as well as honor. And he approved himself worthy of his good fortune. He kept forty gallant housecarles in his hall all the winter, and Torfrida and her lasses made and mended their clothes. He gave large gifts to the Abbey of St. Bertin; and had masses sung for the souls of all whom he had slain, according to a rough list which he furnished,— bidding the monks not to be chary of two or three masses extra at times, as his memory was short, and he might have sent more souls to purgatory than he had recollected. He gave great alms at his door to all the poor. He befriended, especially, all shipwrecked and needy mariners, feeding and clothing them, and begging their freedom as a gift from Baldwin. He feasted the knights of the neighborhood, who since his baresark campaign, had all vowed him the most gallant of warriors, and since his accession of wealth, the most courteous of gentlemen; and so all went merrily, as it is written, "As long as thou doest well unto thyself, men will speak well of thee."

So he would have fain stayed at home at St. Omer; but he was Robert's man, and his good friend likewise; and to the wars he must go forth once more; and for eight or nine weary months Torfrida was alone: but very happy, for a certain reason of her own.

At last the short November days came round; and a joyful woman was fair Torfrida, when Martin Lightfoot ran into the hall, and throwing himself down on the rushes like a dog, announced that Hereward and his men would be home before noon, and then fell fast asleep.

There was bustling to and fro of her and her maids; decking of the hall in the best hangings; strewing of fresh rushes, to the dislodgement of Martin; setting out of square tables, and stoops and mugs thereon; cooking of victuals, broaching of casks; and above all, for Hereward's self, heating of much water, and setting out, in the inner chamber, of the great bath-tub and bath-sheet, which was the special delight of a hero fresh from the war.

And by midday the streets of St. Omer rang with clank and tramp and trumpet-blare, and in marched Hereward and all his men, and swung round through the gateway into the court, where Torfrida stood to welcome them, as fair as day, a silver stirrup-cup in her hand. And while the men were taking off their harness and dressing their horses, she and Hereward went in together, and either took such joy of the other, that a year's parting was forgot in a minute's meeting.

"Now," cried she, in a tone half of triumph, half of tenderness, "look there!"

"A cradle? And a baby?"

"Your baby."

"Is it a boy?" asked Hereward, who saw in his mind's eye a thing which would grow and broaden at his knee year by year, and learn from him to ride, to shoot, to fight. "Happy for him if he does not learn worse from me," thought Hereward, with a sudden movement of humility and contrition, which was surely marked in heaven; for Torfrida marked it on earth.

But she mistook its meaning.

"Do not be vexed. It is a girl."

"Never mind!" as if it was a calamity over which he was bound to comfort the mother. "If she is half as beautiful as you look at this moment, what splintering of lances there will be about her! How jolly, to see the lads hewing at each other, while our daughter sits in the pavilion, as Queen of Love!"

Torfrida laughed. "You think of nothing but fighting, bear of the North Seas."

"Every one to his trade. Well, yes, I am glad that it is a girl."

"I thought you seemed vexed. Why did you cross yourself?"

"Because I thought to myself, how unfit I was to bring up a boy to be such a knight as—as you would have him; how likely I was, ere all was over, to make him as great a ruffian as myself."

"Hereward! Hereward!" and she threw her arms round his neck for the tenth time. "Blessed be you for those words! Those are the fears which never come true, for they bring down from heaven the grace of God, to guard the humble and contrite heart from that which it fears."

"Ah, Torfrida, I wish I were as good as you!"

"Now—my joy and my life, my hero and my scald—I have great news for you, as well as a little baby. News from England."

"You, and a baby over and above, are worth all England to me."

"But listen: Edward the king is dead!"

"Then there is one fool less on earth; and one saint more, I suppose, in heaven."

"And Harold Godwinsson is king in his stead. And he has married your niece Aldytha, and sworn friendship with her brothers."

"I expected no less. Well, every dog has his day."

"And his will be a short one. William of Normandy has sworn to drive him out."

"Then he will do it. And so the poor little Swan-neck is packed into a convent, that the houses of Godwin and Leofric may rush into each other's arms, and perish together! Fools, fools, fools! I will hear no more of such a mad world. My queen, tell me about your sweet self. What is all this to me? Am I not a wolf's head, and a landless man?"

"O my king, have not the stars told me that you will be an earl and a ruler of men, when all your foes are wolves' heads as you are now? And the weird is coming true already. Tosti Godwinsson is in the town at this moment, an outlaw and a wolf's head himself."

Hereward laughed a great laugh.

"Aha! Every man to his right place at last. Tell me about that, for it will amuse me. I have heard naught of him since he sent the king his Hereford thralls' arms and legs in the pickle-barrels; to show him, he said, that there was plenty of cold meat on his royal demesnes."

"You have not heard, then, how he murdered in his own chamber at York, Gamel Ormsson and Ulf Dolfinsson?"

"That poor little lad? Well, a gracious youth was Tosti, ever since he went to kill his brother Harold with teeth and claws, like a wolf; and as he grows in years, he grows in grace. But what said Ulf's father and the Gospatricks?"

"Dolfin and young Gospatrick were I know not where. But old Gospatrick came down to Westminster, to demand law for his grandnephew's blood."

"A silly thing of the old Thane, to walk into the wolf's den."

"And so he found. He was stabbed there, three days after Christmas-tide, and men say that Queen Edith did it, for love of Tosti, her brother. Then Dolfin and young Gospatrick took to the sea, and away to Scotland: and so Tosti rid himself of all the good blood in the North, except young Waltheof Siwardsson, whose turn, I fear, will come next."

"How comes he here, then?"

"The Northern men rose at that, killed his servant at York, took all his treasures, and marched down to Northampton, plundering and burning. They would have marched on London town, if Harold had not met them there from the king. There they cried out against Tosti, and all his taxes, and his murders, and his changing Canute's laws, and would have young Morcar for their earl. A tyrant they would not endure. Free they were born and bred, they said, and free they would live and die. Harold must needs do justice, even on his own brother."

"Especially when he knows that that brother is his worst foe."

"Harold is a better man than you take him for, my Hereward. But be that as it may, Morcar is earl, and Tosti outlawed, and here in St. Omer, with wife and child."

"My nephew Earl of Northumbria! As I might have been, if I had been a wiser man."

"If you had, you would never have found me."

"True, my queen! They say Heaven tempers the wind to the shorn lamb; but it tempers it too, sometimes, to the hobbled ass; and so it has done by me. And so the rogues have fallen out, and honest men may come by their own. For, as the Northern men have done by one brother, so will the Eastern men do by the other. Let Harold see how many of those fat Lincolnshire manors, which he has seized into his own hands, he holds by this day twelve months. But what is all this to me, my queen, while you and I can kiss, and laugh the world to scorn?"

"This to you, beloved, that, great as you are, Torfrida must have you greater still; and out of all this coil and confusion you may win something, if you be wise."

"Sweet lips, be still, and let us love instead of plotting."

"And this, too—you shall not stop my mouth—that Harold Godwinsson has sent a letter to you."

"Harold Godwinsson is my very good lord," sneered Hereward.

"And this it said, with such praises and courtesies concerning you, as made thy wife's heart beat high with pride: 'If Hereward Leofricsson will come home to England, he shall have his rights in law again, and his manors in Lincolnshire, and a thanes-ship in East Anglia, and manors for his men-at-arms; and if that be not enough, he shall have an earldom, as soon as there is one to give.'"

"And what says to that, Torfrida, Hereward's queen?"

"You will not be angry if I answered the letter for you?"

"If you answered it one way,—no. If another,—yes."

Torfrida trembled. Then she looked Hereward full in the face with her keen clear eyes.

"Now shall I see whether I have given myself to Hereward in vain, body and soul, or whether I have trained him to be my true and perfect knight."

"You answered, then," said Hereward, "thus—"

"Say on," said she, turning her face away again.

"Hereward Leofricsson tells Harold Godwinsson that he is his equal, and not his man; and that he will never put his hands between the hands of a son of Godwin. An Etheling born, a king of the house of Cerdic, outlawed him from his right, and none but an Etheling born shall give him his right again."

"I said it, I said it. Those were my very words!" and Torfrida burst into tears, while Hereward kissed her, almost fawned upon her, calling her his queen, his saga-wife, his guardian angel.

"I was sorely tempted," sobbed she. "Sorely. To see you, rich and proud, upon your own lands, an earl may be,—may be, I thought at whiles, a king. But it could not be. It did not stand with honor, my hero,—not with honor."

"Not with honor. Get me gay garments out of the chest, and let us go in royally, and royally feast my jolly riders."

"Stay awhile," said she, kissing his head as she combed and curled his long golden locks; and her own raven ones, hardly more beautiful, fell over them and mingled with them. "Stay awhile, my pride. There is another spell in the wind, stirred up by devil or witch-wife, and it comes from Tosti Godwinsson."

"Tosti, the cold-meat butcher? What has he to say to me?"

"This,—'If Hereward will come with me to William of Normandy, and help us against Harold, the perjured, then will William do for him all that Harold would have done, and more beside.'"

"And what answered Torfrida?"

"It was not so said to me that I could answer. I had it by a side-wind, through the Countess Judith." [Footnote: Tosti's wife, Earl Baldwin's daughter, sister of Matilda, William the Conqueror's wife.]

"And she had it from her sister, Matilda."

"And she, of course, from Duke William himself."

"And what would you have answered, if you had answered, pretty one?"

"Nay, I know not. I cannot be always queen. You must be king sometimes."

Torfrida did not say that this latter offer had been a much sorer temptation than the former.

"And has not the base-born Frenchman enough knights of his own, that he needs the help of an outlaw like me?"

"He asks for help from all the ends of the earth. He has sent that Lanfranc to the Pope; and there is talk of a sacred banner, and a crusade against England."

"The monks are with him, then?" said Hereward. "That is one more count in their score. But I am no monk. I have shorn many a crown, but I have kept my own hair as yet, you see."

"I do see," said she, playing with his locks. "But,—but he wants you. He has sent for Angevins, Poitevins, Bretons, Flemings,—promising lands, rank, money, what not. Tosti is recruiting for him here in Flanders now. He will soon be off to the Orkneys, I suspect, or to Sweyn in Denmark, after Vikings."

"Here? Has Baldwin promised him men?"

"What could the good old man do? He could not refuse his own son-in-law. This, at least, I know, that a messenger has gone off to Scotland, to Gilbert of Ghent, to bring or send any bold Flemings who may prefer fat England to lean Scotland."

"Lands, rank, money, eh? So he intends that the war should pay itself—out of English purses. What answer would you have me make to that, wife mine?"

"The Duke is a terrible man. What if he conquers? And conquer he will."

"Is that written in your stars?"

"It is, I fear. And if he have the Pope's blessing, and the Pope's banner—Dare we resist the Holy Father?"

"Holy step-father, you mean; for a step-father he seems to prove to merry England. But do you really believe that an old man down in Italy can make a bit of rag conquer by saying a few prayers at it? If I am to believe in a magic flag, give me Harold Hardraade's Landcyda, at least, with Harold and his Norsemen behind it."

"William's French are as good as those Norsemen, man for man; and horsed withal, Hereward."

"That may be," said he, half testily, with a curse on the tanner's grandson and his French popinjays, "and our Englishmen are as good as any two Norsemen, as the Norse themselves say." He could not divine, and Torfrida hardly liked to explain to him the glamour which the Duke of Normandy had cast over her, as the representative of chivalry, learning, civilization, a new and nobler life for men than the world had yet seen; one which seemed to connect the young races of Europe with the wisdom of the ancients and the magic glories of old Imperial Rome.

"You are not fair to that man," said she, after a while. "Hereward, Hereward, have I not told you how, though body be strong, mind is stronger? That is what that man knows; and therefore he has prospered. Therefore his realms are full of wise scholars, and thriving schools, and fair minsters, and his men are sober, and wise, and learned like clerks—"

"And false like clerks, as he is himself. Schoolcraft and honesty never went yet together, Torfrida—"

"Not in me?"

"You are not a clerk, you are a woman, and more, you are an elf, a goddess; there is none like you. But hearken to me. This man is false. All the world knows it."

"He promises, they say, to govern England justly as King Edward's heir, according to the old laws and liberties of the realm."

"Of course. If he does not come as the old monk's heir, how does he come at all? If he does not promise our—their, I mean, for I am no Englishman—laws and liberties, who will join him? But his riders and hirelings will not fight for nothing. They must be paid with English land, and English land they will have, for they will be his men, whoever else are not. They will be his darlings, his housecarles, his hawks to sit on his fist and fly at his game; and English bones will be picked clean to feed them. And you would have me help to do that, Torfrida? Is that the honor of which you spoke so boldly to Harold Godwinsson?"

Torfrida was silent. To have brought Hereward under the influence of William was an old dream of hers. And yet she was proud at the dream being broken thus. And so she said:

"You are right. It is better for you,—it is better than to be William's darling, and the greatest earl in his court,—to feel that you are still an Englishman. Promise me but one thing, that you will make no fierce or desperate answer to the Duke."

"And why not answer the tanner as he deserves?"

"Because my art, and my heart too, tells me that your fortunes and his are linked together. I have studied my tables, but they would not answer. Then I cast lots in Virgilius—"

"And what found you there?" asked he, anxiously.

"I opened at the lines,—

'Pacem me exanimis et Martis sorte peremptis Oratis? Equidem et vivis concedere vellem.'"

"And what means that?"

"That you may have to pray him to pity the slain; and have for answer, that their lands may be yours if you will but make peace with him. At least, do not break hopelessly with that man. Above all, never use that word concerning him which you used just now; the word which he never forgives. Remember what he did to them of Alencon, when they hung raw hides over the wall, and cried, 'Plenty of work for the tanner!'"

"Let him pick out the prisoners' eyes, and chop off their hands, and shoot them into the town from mangonels,—he must go far and thrive well ere I give him a chance of doing that by me."

"Hereward, Hereward, my own! Boast not, but fear God. Who knows, in such a world as this, to what end we may come? Night after night I am haunted with spectres, eyeless, handless—"

"This is cold comfort for a man just out of hard fighting in the ague-fens!"

She threw her arms round him, and held him as if she would never let him go.

"When you die, I die. And you will not die: you will be great and glorious, and your name will be sung by scald and minstrel through many a land, far and wide. Only be not rash. Be not high-minded. Promise me to answer this man wisely. The more crafty he is, the more crafty must you be likewise."

"Let us tell this mighty hero, then," said Hereward,—trying to laugh away her fears, and perhaps his own,—"that while he has the Holy Father on his side, he can need no help from a poor sinful worm like me."

"Hereward, Hereward!"

"Why, is there aught about hides in that?"

"I want,—I want an answer which may not cut off all hope in case of the worst."

"Then let us say boldly, 'On the day that William is King of all England, Hereward will come and put his hands between his, and be his man.'"

That message was sent to William at Rouen. He laughed,—

"It is a fair challenge from a valiant man. The day shall come when I will claim it."

Tosti and Hereward passed that winter in St. Omer, living in the same street, passing each other day by day, and never spoke a word one to the other.

Robert the Frison heard of it, and tried to persuade Hereward.

"Let him purge himself of the murder of Ulf, the boy, son of my friend Dolfin; and after that, of Gamel, son of Orm; and after that, again, of Gospatrick, my father's friend, whom his sister slew for his sake; and then an honest man may talk with him. Were he not my good lord's brother-in-law, as he is, more's the pity, I would challenge him to fight a l'outrance, with any weapons he might choose."

"Heaven protect him in that case," quoth Robert the Frison.

"As it is, I will keep the peace. And I will see that my men keep the peace, though there are Scarborough and Bamborough lads among them, who long to cut his throat upon the streets. But more I will not do."

So Tosti sulked through the winter at St. Omer, and then went off to get help from Sweyn, of Denmark, and failing that, from Harold Hardraade of Norway. But how he sped there must be read in the words of a cunninger saga-man than this chronicler, even in those of the "Icelandic Homer," Snorro Sturleson.



CHAPTER XVI.

HOW HEREWARD WAS ASKED TO SLAY AN OLD COMRADE.

In those days Hereward went into Bruges, to Marquis Baldwin, about his business. And as he walked in Bruges street, he met an old friend, Gilbert of Ghent.

He had grown somewhat stouter, and somewhat grayer, in the last ten years: but he was as hearty as ever; and as honest, according to his own notions of honesty.

He shook Hereward by both hands, clapt him on the back, swore with many oaths, that he had heard of his fame in all lands, that he always said that he would turn out a champion and a gallant knight, and had said it long before he killed the bear. As for killing it, it was no more than he expected, and nothing to what Hereward had done since, and would do yet.

Wherefrom Hereward opined that Gilbert had need of him.

They chatted on: Hereward asking after old friends, and sometimes after old foes, whom he had long since forgiven; for though he always avenged an injury, he never bore malice for one; a distinction less common now than then, when a man's honor, as well as his safety, depended on his striking again, when he was struck.

"And how is little Alftruda? Big she must be now?" asked he at last.

"The fiend fly away with her,—or rather, would that he had flown away with her, before ever I saw the troublesome little jade. Big? She is grown into the most beautiful lass that ever was seen,—which is, what a young fellow like you cares for; and more trouble to me than all my money, which is what an old fellow like me cares for. It is partly about her that I am over here now. Fool that I was, ever to let an Etheliza [Footnote: A princess of the royal blood of Cerdic, and therefore of Edward the Confessor.] into my house"; and Gilbert swore a great deal.

"How was she an Etheliza?" asked Hereward, who cared nothing about the matter. "And how came she into your house? I never could understand that, any more than how the bear came there."

"Ah! As to the bear, I have my secrets, which I tell no one. He is dead and buried, thanks to you."

"And I sleep on his skin every night."

"You do, my little Champion? Well, warm is the bed that is well earned. But as for her;—see here, and I'll tell you. She was Gospatrick's ward and kinswoman,—how, I do not rightly know. But this I know, that she comes from Uchtred, the earl whom Canute slew, and that she is heir to great estates in Northumberland.

"Gospatrick, that fought at Dunsinane?"

"Yes, not the old Thane, his uncle, whom Tosti has murdered; but Gospatrick, King Malcolm's cousin, Dolfin's father. Well, she was his ward. He gave me her to keep, for he wanted her out of harm's way—the lass having a bonny dower, lands and money—till he could marry her up to one of his sons. I took her; of course I was not going to do other men's work for naught; so I would have married her up to my poor boy, if he had but lived. But he would not live, as you know. Then I would have married her to you, and made you my heir, I tell you honestly, if you had not flown off, like a hot-headed young springald, as you were then."

"You were very kind. But how is she an Etheliza?"

"Etheliza? Twice over. Her father was of high blood among those Saxons; and if not, are not all the Gospatricks Ethelings? Their grandmother, Uchtred's wife, was Ethelred, Evil-Counsel's daughter, King Edward of London's sister; and I have heard that this girl's grandfather was their son,—but died young,—or was killed with his father. Who cares?"

"Not I," quoth Hereward.

"Well—he wants to marry her to Dolfin, his eldest son."

"Why, Dolfin had a wife when I was at Dunsinane."

"But she is dead since, and young Ulf, her son, murdered by Tosti last winter."

"I know."

"Whereon Gospatrick sends to me for the girl and her dowry. What was I to do? Give her up? Little it is, lad, that I ever gave up, after I had it once in my grip, or I should be a poorer man than I am now. Have and hold, is my rule. What should I do? What I did. I was coming hither on business of my own, so I put her on board ship, and half her dower,—where the other half is, I know; and man must draw me with wild horses, before he finds out;—and came here to my kinsman, Baldwin, to see if he had any proper young fellow to whom we might marry the lass, and so go shares in her money and the family connection. Could a man do more wisely?"

"Impossible," quoth Hereward.

"But see how a wise man is lost by fortune. When I come here, whom should I find but Dolfin himself? The dog had scent of my plan, all the way from Dolfinston there, by Peebles. He hunts me out, the hungry Scotch wolf; rides for Leith, takes ship, and is here to meet me, having accused me before Baldwin as a robber and ravisher, and offers to prove his right to the jade on my body in single combat."

"The villain!" quoth Hereward. "There is no modesty left on earth, nor prudence either. To come here, where he might have stumbled on Tosti, who murdered his son, and I would surely do the like by him, himself. Lucky for him that Tosti is off to Norway on his own errand."

"Modesty and prudence? None now-a-days, young sire; nor justice either, I think; for when Baldwin hears us both—and I told my story as cannily as I could—he tells me that he is very sorry for an old vassal and kinsman, and so forth,—but I must either disgorge or fight."

"Then fight," quoth Hereward.

"'Per se aut per campioneem,'—that's the old law, you know."

"Not a doubt of it."

"Look you, Hereward. I am no coward, nor a clumsy man of my hands."

"He is either fool or liar who says so."

"But see. I find it hard work to hold my own in Scotland now. Folks don't like me, or trust me; I can't say why."

"How unreasonable!" quoth Hereward.

"And if I kill this youth, and so have a blood-feud with Gospatrick, I have a hornet's nest about my ears. Not only he and his sons,—who are masters of Scotch Northumberland, [Footnote: Between Tweed and Forth.]— but all his cousins; King Malcolm, and Donaldbain, and, for aught I know, Harold and the Godwinssons, if he bid them take up the quarrel. And beside, that Dolfin is a big man. If you cross Scot and Saxon, you breed a very big man. If you cross again with a Dane or a Norseman, you breed a giant. His grandfather was a Scots prince, his grandmother an English Etheliza, his mother a Norse princess, as you know,—and how big he is, you should remember. He weighs half as much again as I, and twice as much as you."

"Butchers count by weight, and knights by courage," quoth Hereward.

"Very well for you, who are young and active; but I take him to be a better man than that ogre of Cornwall, whom they say you killed."

"What care I? Let him be twice as good, I'd try him."

"Ah! I knew you were the old Hereward still. Now hearken to me. Be my champion. You owe me a service, lad. Fight that man, challenge him in open field. Kill him, as you are sure to do. Claim the lass, and win her,—and then we will part her dower. And (though it is little that I care for young lasses' fancies), to tell you truth, she never favored any man but you."

Hereward started at the snare which had been laid for him; and then fell into a very great laughter.

"My most dear and generous host: you are the wiser, the older you grow. A plan worthy of Solomon! You are rid of Sieur Dolfin without any blame to yourself."

"Just so."

"While I win the lass, and, living here in Flanders, am tolerably safe from any blood-feud of the Gospatricks."

"Just so."

"Perfect: but there is only one small hindrance to the plan; and that is—that I am married already."

Gilbert stopped short, and swore a great oath.

"But," he said, after a while, "does that matter so much after all?"

"Very little, indeed, as all the world knows, if one has money enough, and power enough."

"And you have both," they say.

"But, still more unhappily, my money is my wife's."

"Peste!"

"And more unhappily still, I am so foolishly fond of her, that I would sooner have her in her smock, than any other woman with half England for a dower."

"Then I suppose I must look out for another champion."

"Or save yourself the trouble, by being—just as a change—an honest man."

"I believe you are right," said Gilbert, laughing; "but it is hard to begin so late in life."

"And after one has had so little practice."

"Aha! Thou art the same merry dog of a Hereward. Come along. But could we not poison this Dolfin, after all?"

To which proposal Hereward gave no encouragement.

"And now, my tres beausire, may I ask you, in return, what business brings you to Flanders?"

"Have I not told you?"

"No, but I have guessed. Gilbert of Ghent is on his way to William of Normandy."

"Well. Why not?"

"Why not?—certainly. And has brought out of Scotland a few gallant gentlemen, and stout housecarles of my acquaintance."

Gilbert laughed.

"You may well say that. To tell you the truth, we have flitted, bag and baggage. I don't believe that we have left a dog behind."

"So you intend to 'colonize' in England, as the learned clerks would call it? To settle; to own land; and enter, like the Jews of old, into goodly houses which you builded not, farms which you tilled not, wells which you digged not, and orchards which you planted not?"

"Why, what a clerk you are! That sounds like Scripture."

"And so it is. I heard it in a French priest's sermon, which he preached here in St. Omer a Sunday or two back, exhorting all good Catholics, in the Pope's name, to enter upon the barbarous land of England, tainted with the sin of Simon Magus, and expel thence the heretical priests, and so forth, promising them that they should have free leave to cut long thongs out of other men's hides."

Gilbert chuckled.

"You laugh. The priest did not; for after sermon I went up to him, and told him how I was an Englishman, and an outlaw, and a desperate man, who feared neither saint nor devil; and if I heard such talk as that again in St. Omer, I would so shave the speaker's crown that he should never need razor to his dying day."

"And what is that to me?" said Gilbert, in an uneasy, half-defiant tone; for Hereward's tone had been more than half-defiant.

"This. That there are certain broad lands in England, which were my father's, and are now my nephews' and my mother's, and some which should by right be mine. And I advise you, as a friend, not to make entry on those lands, lest Hereward in turn make entry on you. And who is he that will deliver you out of my hand?"

"God and his Saints alone, thou fiend out of the pit!" quoth Gilbert, laughing. But he was growing warm, and began to tutoyer Hereward.

"I am in earnest, Gilbert of Ghent, my good friend of old time."

"I know thee well enough, man. Why in the name of all glory and plunder art thou not coming with us? They say William has offered thee the earldom of Northumberland."

"He has not. And if he has, it is not his to give. And if it were, it is by right neither mine nor my nephews', but Waltheof Siwardsson's. Now hearken unto me; and settle it in your mind, thou and William both, that your quarrel is against none but Harold and the Godwinssons, and their men of Wessex; but that if you go to cross the Watling street, and meddle with the free Danes, who are none of Harold's men—"

"Stay. Harold has large manors in Lincolnshire, and so has Edith his sister; and what of them, Sir Hereward?"

"That the man who touches them, even though the men on them may fight on Harold's side, had better have put his head into a hornet's nest. Unjustly were they seized from their true owners by Harold and his fathers; and the holders of them will owe no service to him a day longer than they can help; but will, if he fall, demand an earl of their own race, or fight to the death."

"Best make young Waltheof earl, then."

"Best keep thy foot out of them, and the foot of any man for whom thou carest. Now, good by. Friends we are, and friends let us be."

"Ah, that thou wert coming to England!"

"I bide my time. Come I may, when I see fit. But whether I come as friend or foe depends on that of which I have given thee fair warning."

So they parted for the time.

It will be seen hereafter how Gilbert took his own advice about young Waltheof, but did not take Hereward's advice about the Lincoln manors.

In Baldwin's hall that day Hereward met Dolfin; and when the magnificent young Scot sprang to him, embraced him, talked over old passages, complimented him on his fame, lamented that he himself had won no such honors in the field, Hereward felt much more inclined to fight for him than against him.

Presently the ladies entered from the bower inside the hall. A buzz of expectation rose from all the knights, and Alftruda's name was whispered round.

She came in, and Hereward saw at the first glance that Gilbert had for once in his life spoken truth. So beautiful a girl he had never beheld; and as she swept down toward him he for one moment forgot Torfrida, and stood spell-bound like the rest.

Her eye caught his. If his face showed recognition, hers showed none. The remembrance of their early friendship, of her deliverance from the monster, had plainly passed away.

"Fickle, ungrateful things, these women," thought Hereward,

She passed him close. And as she did so, she turned her head and looked him full in the face one moment, haughty and cold.

"So you could not wait for me?" said she, in a quiet whisper, and went on straight to Dolfin, who stood trembling with expectation and delight.

She put her hand into his.

"Here stands my champion," said she.

"Say, here kneels your slave," cried the Scot, dropping to the pavement a true Highland knee. Whereon forth shrieked a bagpipe, and Dolfin's minstrel sang, in most melodious Gaelic,—

"Strong as a horse's hock, shaggy as a stag's brisket, Is the knee of the young torrent-leaper, the pride of the house of Crinan. It bent not to Macbeth the accursed, it bends not even to Malcolm the Anointed, But it bends like a harebell—who shall blame it?— before the breath of beauty."

Which magnificent effusion being interpreted by Hereward for the instruction of the ladies, procured for the red-headed bard more than one handsome gift.

A sturdy voice arose out of the crowd.

"The fair lady, my Lord Count, and knights all, will need no champion as far as I am concerned. When one sees so fair a pair together, what can a knight say, in the name of all knighthood, but that the heavens have made them for each other, and that it were sin and shame to sunder them?"

The voice was that of Gilbert of Ghent, who, making a virtue of necessity, walked up to the pair, his weather-beaten countenance wreathed into what were meant for paternal smiles.

"Why did you not say as much in Scotland, and save me all this trouble?" pertinently asked the plain-spoken Scot.

"My lord prince, you owe me a debt for my caution. Without it, the poor lady had never known the whole fervency of your love; or these noble knights and yourself the whole evenness of Count Baldwin's justice."

Alftruda turned her head away half contemptuously; and as she did so, she let her hand drop listlessly from Dolfin's grasp, and drew back to the other ladies.

A suspicion crossed Hereward's mind. Did she really love the Prince? Did those strange words of hers mean that she had not yet forgotten Hereward himself?

However, he said to himself that it was no concern of his, as it certainly was not: went home to Torfrida, told her everything that had happened, laughed over it with her, and then forgot Alftruda, Dolfin, and Gilbert, in the prospect of a great campaign in Holland.



CHAPTER XVII.

HOW HEREWARD TOOK THE NEWS FROM STANFORD BRIGG AND HASTINGS.

After that, news came thick and fast.

News of all the fowl of heaven flocking to the feast of the great God, that they might eat the flesh of kings, and captains, and mighty men, and horses, and them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both bond and free.

News from Rome, how England, when conquered, was to be held as a fief of St. Peter, and spiritually, as well as temporarily, enslaved. News how the Gonfanon of St. Peter, and a ring with a bit of St. Peter himself enclosed therein, had come to Rouen, to go before the Norman host, as the Ark went before that of Israel.

Then news from the North. How Tosti had been to Sweyn, and bid him come back and win the country again, as Canute his uncle had done; and how the cautious Dane had answered that he was a much smaller man than Canute, and had enough to hold his own against the Norsemen, and could not afford to throw for such high stakes as his mighty uncle.

Then how Tosti had been to Norway, to Harold Hardraade, and asked him why he had been fighting fifteen years for Denmark, when England lay open to him. And how Harold of Norway had agreed to come; and how he had levied one half of the able-bodied men in Norway; and how he was gathering a mighty fleet at Solundir, in the mouth of the Sogne Fiord. Of all this Hereward was well informed; for Tosti came back again to St. Omer, and talked big. But Hereward and he had no dealings with each other. But at last, when Tosti tried to entice some of Hereward's men to sail with him, Hereward sent him word that if he met him, he would kill him in the streets.

Then Tosti, who (though he wanted not for courage) knew that he was no match for Hereward, went off to Bruges, leaving his wife and family behind; gathered sixty ships at Ostend, went off to the Isle of Wight, and forced the landsfolk to give him money and food. And then Harold of England's fleet, which was watching the coast against the Normans, drove him away; and he sailed off north, full of black rage against his brother Harold and all Englishmen, and burned, plundered, and murdered, along the coast of Lincolnshire, out of brute spite to the Danes who had expelled him.

Then came news how he had got into the Humber; how Earl Edwin and his Northumbrians had driven him out; and how he went off to Scotland to meet Harold of Norway; and how he had put his hands between Harold's, and become his man.

And all the while the Norman camp at St. Pierre-sur-Dive grew and grew; and all was ready, if the wind would but change.

And so Hereward looked on, helpless, and saw these two great storm-clouds growing,—one from north, and one from south,—to burst upon his native land.

Two invasions at the same moment of time; and these no mere Viking raids for plunder, but deliberate attempts at conquest and colonization, by the two most famous captains of the age. What if both succeeded? What if the two storm-clouds swept across England, each on its own path, and met in the midst, to hurl their lightnings into each other? A fight between William of Normandy and Harold of Norway, on some moorland in Mercia,—it would be a battle of giants; a sight at which Odin and the Gods of Valhalla would rise from their seats, and throw away the mead-horn, to stare down on the deeds of heroes scarcely less mighty than themselves. Would that neither might win! Would that they would destroy and devour, till there was none left of Frenchmen or of Norwegians!

So sang Hereward, after his heathen fashion; and his housecarles applauded the song. But Torfrida shuddered.