Hereward, the Last of the English

  CHAPTER IX.

  HOW HEREWARD WENT TO THE WAR IN SCALDMARILAND.

  It has been shown how the Count of Guisnes had been a thorn in the sideof Baldwin of Lille, and how that thorn was drawn out by Hereward. Buta far sharper thorn in his side, and one which had troubled many a Countbefore, and was destined to trouble others afterward, was those unrulyHollanders, or Frisians, who dwelt in Scaldmariland, "the land of themeres of the Scheldt." Beyond the vast forests of Flanders, in morassesand alluvial islands whose names it is impossible now to verify, so muchhas the land changed, both by inundations and by embankments, by thebrute forces of nature and the noble triumphs of art, dwelt a folk,poor, savage, living mostly, as in Caesar's time, in huts raised abovethe sea on piles or mounds of earth; often without cattle or seedfield,half savage, half heathen, but free. Free, with the divine instinct offreedom, and all the self-help and energy which spring thereout.

  They were a mongrel race; and, as most mongrel races are (when sprungfrom parents not too far apart in blood), a strong race; the remnantof those old Frisians and Batavians, who had defied, and all butsuccessfully resisted, the power of Rome; mingled with fresh crosses ofTeutonic blood from Frank, Sueve, Saxon, and the other German tribes,who, after the fall of the Roman Empire, had swept across the land.

  Their able modern historian has well likened the struggle betweenCivilis and the Romans to that between William the Silent and theSpaniard. It was, without doubt, the foreshadow of their wholehistory. They were distinguished, above most European races, for sturdyindependence, and, what generally accompanies it, sturdy common sense.They could not understand why they should obey foreign Frank rulers,whether set over them by Dagobert or by Charlemagne. They could notunderstand why they were to pay tithes to foreign Frank priests, who hadforced on them, at the sword's point, a religion which they only halfbelieved, and only half understood. Many a truly holy man preached tothem to the best of his powers: but the cross of St. Boniface had toooften to follow the sword of Charles Martel; and for every Frisian whowas converted another was killed.

  "Free Frisians," nevertheless, they remained, at least in name and intheir statute-book, "as long as the wind blows out of the clouds, andthe world stands." The feudal system never took root in their soil.[Footnote: Motley. "Rise of the Dutch Republic."] If a Frank Count wasto govern them, he must govern according to their own laws. Again andagain they rebelled, even against that seemingly light rule. Againand again they brought down on themselves the wrath of their nominalsovereigns the Counts of Flanders; then of the Kaisers of Germany; and,in the thirteenth century, of the Inquisition itself. Then a crusadewas preached against them as "Stadings," heretics who paid no tithes,ill-used monks and nuns, and worshipped (or were said to worship)a black cat and the foul fiend among the meres and fens. Conrad ofMarpurg, the brutal Director of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, burnt them athis wicked will, extirpating, it may be, heresy, but not the spirit ofthe race. That, crushed down and seemingly enslaved, during the middleage, under Count Dirk and his descendants, still lived; destined at lastto conquer. They were a people who had determined to see for themselvesand act for themselves in the universe in which they found themselves;and, moreover (a necessary corollary of such a resolution), to fight tothe death against any one who interfered with them in so doing.

  Again and again, therefore, the indomitable spirit rose, founding freetowns with charters and guilds; embanking the streams, draining themeres, fighting each other and the neighboring princes; till, in theirlast great struggle against the Pope and Spain, they rose once and forall,

  "Heated hot with burning fears, And bathed in baths of hissing tears, And battered with the strokes of doom To shape and use,"

  as the great Protestant Dutch Republic.

  A noble errand it had been for such a man as Hereward to help those mentoward freedom, instead of helping Frank Counts to enslave them;--men ofhis own blood, with laws and customs like those of his own Anglo-Danes,living in a land so exactly like his own that every mere and fen andwood reminded him of the scenes of his boyhood. The very names of thetwo lands were alike,--"Holland," the hollow land,--the one of England,the other of Flanders.

  But all this was hidden from Hereward. To do as he would be done by wasa lesson which he had never been taught. If men had invaded his land, hewould have cried, like the Frisians whom he was going to enslave, "Iam free as long as the wind blows out of the clouds!" and died where hestood. But that was not the least reason why he should not invade anyother man's land, and try whether or not he, too, would die where hestood. To him these Frieslanders were simply savages, probably heathens,who would not obey their lawful lord, who was a gentleman and aChristian; besides, renown, and possibly a little plunder, might be gotby beating them into obedience. He knew not what he did; and knew not,likewise, that as he had done to others, so would it be done to him.

  Baldwin had at that time made over his troublesome Hollanders to hisyounger son Robert, the Viking whom little Arnulf longed to imitate.

  Florent, Count of Holland, and vassal of the great Marquis, had justdied, leaving a pretty young widow, to whom the Hollanders had no mindto pay one stiver more than they were forced. All the isles of Zeeland,and the counties of Eonham and Alost, were doing that which was rightin the sight of their own eyes, and finding themselves none the worsetherefor,--though the Countess Gertrude doubtless could buy fewer silksof Greece or gems of Italy. But to such a distressed lady a championcould not long be wanting; and Robert, after having been driven out ofSpain by the Moors with fearful loss, and in a second attempt wreckedwith all his fleet as soon as he got out of port, resolved to tempt themain no more, and leave the swan's path for that of the fat oxen andblack dray-horses of Holland.

  So he rushed to avenge the wrongs of the Countess Gertrude; and hisfather, whose good-natured good sense foresaw that the fiery Robertwould raise storms upon his path,--happily for his old age he did notforesee the worst,--let him go, with his blessing.

  So Robert gathered to him valiant ruffians, as many as he could find;and when he heard of the Viking who had brought Eustace of Guisnes toreason, it seemed to him that he was a man who would do his work. Sowhen the great Marquis came down to St. Omer to receive the homage ofCount Eustace of Guisnes, Robert came thither too, and saw Hereward.

  "You have done us good service, Harold Naemansson, as it pleases you tobe called," said Baldwin, smiling. "But some man's son you are, if everI saw a gallant knight earl-born by his looks as well as his deeds."

  Hereward bowed.

  "And for me," said Robert, "Naemansson or earl's son, here is myViking's welcome to all Vikings like myself." And he held out his hand.

  Hereward took it.

  "You failed in Galicia, beausire, only because your foes were a hundredto one. You will not fail where you are going, if (as I hear) they arebut ten to one."

  Robert laughed, vain and gratified.

  "Then you know where I have been, and where I am going?"

  "Why not? As you know well, we Vikings are all brothers, and all knoweach other's counsel, from ship to ship and port to port."

  Then the two young men looked each other in the face, and each saw thatthe other was a man who would suit him.

  "Skall to the Viking!" cried Robert, aping, as was his fancy, the Norserovers' slang. "Will you come with me to Holland?"

  "You must ask my young lord there," and he pointed to Arnulf. "I am hisman now, by all laws of honor."

  A flush of jealousy passed over Robert's face. He, haplessly forhimself, thought that he had a grievance.

  The rights of primogeniture--_droits d'ainesse_--were not respected inthe family of the Baldwins as they should have been, had prudence andcommon sense had their way.

  No sacred or divine right is conferred by the fact of a man's being thefirst-born son. If Scripture be Scripture, the "Lord's anointed"was usually rather a younger son of talent and virtue; one born, notaccording to the flesh, but according to the spirit, like David andSolom
on. And so it was in other realms besides Flanders during themiddle age. The father handed on the work--for ruling was hard workin those days--to the son most able to do it. Therefore we can believeLambert of Aschaffenbourg when he says, that in Count Baldwin's familyfor many ages he who pleased his father most took his father's name, andwas hereditary prince of all Flanders; while the other brothers led aninglorious life of vassalage to him.

  But we can conceive, likewise, that such a method would give rise tointrigues, envyings, calumnies, murders, fratracidal civil wars, andall the train of miseries which for some years after this history madeinfamous the house of Baldwin, as they did many another noble house,till they were stopped by the gradual adoption of the rational rule ofprimogeniture.

  So Robert, who might have been a daring and useful friend to hisbrother, had he been forced to take for granted from birth that he wasnobody, and his brother everybody,--as do all younger sons of Englishnoblemen, to their infinite benefit,--held himself to be an injured manfor life, because his father called his first-born Baldwin, and promisedhim the succession,--which indeed he had worthily deserved, according tothe laws of Mammon and this world, by bringing into the family such anheiress as Richilda and such a dowry as Mons.

  But Robert, who thought himself as good as his brother,--though he wasnot such, save in valor,--nursed black envy in his heart. Hard it wasto him to hear his elder brother called Baldwin of Mons, when he himselfhad not a foot of land of his own. Harder still to hear him calledBaldwin the Good, when he felt in himself no title whatsoever to thatepithet. Hardest of all to see a beautiful boy grow up, as heir both ofFlanders and of Hainault.

  Had he foreseen whither that envy would have led him; had he foreseenthe hideous and fratracidal day of February 22d, 1071, and that fairboy's golden locks rolling in dust and blood,--the wild Viking wouldhave crushed the growing snake within his bosom; for he was a knightand a gentleman. But it was hidden from his eyes. He had to "dree hisweird,"--to commit great sins, do great deeds, and die in his bed,mighty and honored, having children to his heart's desire, and leavingthe rest of his substance to his babes. Heaven help him, and the like ofhim!

  But he turned to young Arnulf.

  "Give me your man, boy!"

  Arnulf pouted. He wanted to keep his Viking for himself, and said so.

  "He is to teach me to go 'leding,' as the Norsemen call it, like you."

  Robert laughed. A hint at his piratical attempts pleased his vanity, allthe more because they had been signal failures.

  "Lend him me, then, my pretty nephew, for a month or two, till he hasconquered these Friesland frogs for me; and then, if thou wilt go ledingwith him--"

  "I hope you may never come back," thought Robert to himself; but he didnot say it,

  "Let the knight go," quoth Baldwin.

  "Let me go with him, then."

  "No, by all saints! I cannot have thee poked through with a Frieslandpike, or rotted with a Friesland ague."

  Arnulf pouted still.

  "Abbot, what hast thou been at with the boy? He thinks of naught butblood and wounds, instead of books and prayers."

  "He is gone mad after this--this knight."

  "The Abbot," said Hereward, "knows by hearing of his ears that I bid himbide at home, and try to govern lands in peace like his father and you,Sir Marquis."

  "Eh?"

  The Abbot told honestly what had passed between Hereward and the lad, asthey rode to St. Bertin.

  Baldwin was silent, thinking, and smiling jollily, as was the wont ofthe Debonair.

  "You are a man of sense, beausire. Come with me," said he at last.

  And he, Hereward, and Robert went into an inner room.

  "Sit down on the settle by me."

  "It is too great an honor."

  "Nonsense, man! If I be who I am, I know enough of men to know that Ineed not be ashamed of having you as bench-fellow. Sit down."

  Hereward obeyed of course.

  "Tell me who you are."

  Hereward looked out of the corner of his eyes, smiling and perplexed.

  "Tell me and Robert who you are, man; and be done with it. I believe Iknow already. I have asked far and wide of chapmen, and merchants, andwandering knights, and pirate rascals,--like yourself."

  "And you found that I was a pirate rascal?"

  "I found a pirate rascal who met you in Ireland, three years since, andwill swear that if you have one gray eye and one blue--"

  "As he has," quoth Robert.

  "That I am a wolf's head, and a robber of priests, and an Esau on theface of the earth; every man's hand against me, and mine--for I nevertake but what I give--against every man."

  "That you are the son of my old friend Leofric of Chester: and thehottest-hearted, shrewdest-headed, hardest-handed Berserker in the NorthSeas. You killed Gilbert of Ghent's bear, Siward Digre's cousin. Don'tdeny it."

  "Don't hang me, or send me to the Westminster miracle-worker to behanged, and I will confess."

  "I? Every man is welcome who comes hither with a bold hand and a strongheart. 'The Refuge for the Destitute,' they call Flanders; I supposebecause I am too good-natured to turn rogues out. So do no harm to mine,and mine shall do no harm to you."

  Baldwin's words were true. He found house-room for everybody, helpedeverybody against everybody else (as will be seen), and yet quarrelledwith nobody--at least in his old age--by the mere virtue of goodnature,--which blessed is the man who possesseth.

  So Hereward went off to exterminate the wicked Hollanders, and avengethe wrongs of the Countess Gertrude.