Hereward, the Last of the English

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  HOW EARL GODWIN'S WIDOW CAME TO ST. OMER.

  It would be vain to attempt even a sketch of the reports which came toFlanders from England during the next two years, or of the conversationwhich ensued thereon between Baldwin and his courtiers, or Herewardand Torfrida. Two reports out of three were doubtless false, and twoconversations out of three founded on those false reports.

  It is best, therefore, to interrupt the thread of the story, by somesmall sketch of the state of England after the battle of Hastings;that so we may, at least, guess at the tenor of Hereward and Torfrida'scounsels.

  William had, as yet, conquered little more than the South of England:hardly, indeed, all that; for Herefordshire, Worcestershire, and theneighboring parts, which had belonged to Sweyn, Harold's brother, werestill insecure; and the noble old city of Exeter, confident in her Romanwalls, did not yield till two years after, in A.D. 1068.

  North of his conquered territory, Mercia stretched almost acrossEngland, from Chester to the Wash, governed by Edwin and Morcar, thetwo fair grandsons of Leofric, the great earl, and sons of Alfgar.Edwin called himself Earl of Mercia, and held the Danish burghs. Onthe extreme northwest, the Roman city of Chester was his; while on theextreme southeast (as Domesday book testifies), Morcar held large landsround Bourne, and throughout the south of Lincolnshire, besides callinghimself the Earl of Northumbria. The young men seemed the darlingsof the half-Danish northmen. Chester, Coventry, Derby, Nottingham,Leicester, Stamford, a chain of fortified towns stretching acrossEngland, were at their command; Blethyn, Prince of North Wales, wastheir nephew.

  Northumbria, likewise, was not yet in William's hands. Indeed, it was inno man's hands, since the free Danes, north of the Humber, had expelledTosti, Harold's brother, putting Morcar in his place, and helped thatbrother to slay him at Stanford Brigg. Morcar, instead of residing inhis earldom of Northumbria, had made one Oswulf his deputy; but he hadrivals enough. There was Gospatrick, claiming through his grandfather,Uchtred, and strong in the protection of his cousin Malcolm, King ofScotland; there was young Waltheof, "the forest thief," who had beenborn to Siward Biorn in his old age, just after the battle of Dunsinane;a fine and gallant young man, destined to a swift and sad end.

  William sent to the Northumbrians one Copsi, a Thane of mark and worth,as his procurator, to expel Oswulf. Oswulf and the land-folk answeredby killing Copsi, and doing, every man, that which was right in his owneyes.

  William determined to propitiate the young earls. Perhaps he intended togovern the centre and north of England through them, as feudal vassals,and hoped, meanwhile, to pay his Norman conquerors sufficiently out ofthe forfeited lands of Harold, and those who had fought by his sideat Hastings. It was not his policy to make himself, much less to callhimself, the Conqueror of England. He claimed to be its legitimatesovereign, deriving from his cousin, Edward the Confessor; and whosoeverwould acknowledge him as such had neither right nor cause to fear.Therefore he sent for the young earls. He courted Waltheof, and more,really loved him. He promised Edwin his daughter in marriage. Some sayit was Constance, afterwards married to Alan Fergant of Brittany; but itmay, also, have been the beautiful Adelaide, who, none knew why, earlygave up the world, and died in a convent. Be that as it may, the twoyoung people saw each, and loved each other at Rouen, whither Williamtook Waltheof, Edwin, and his brother; as honored guests in name, inreality as hostages, likewise.

  With the same rational and prudent policy, William respected the fallenroyal families, both of Harold and of Edward; at least, he warred notagainst women; and the wealth and influence of the great English ladieswas enormous. Edith, sister of Harold, and widow of the Confessor,lived in wealth and honor at Winchester. Gyda, Harold's mother, retainedExeter and her land. Aldytha, [Footnote: See her history, told as noneother can tell it, in Bulwer's "Harold."] or Elfgiva, sister of Edwinand Morcar, niece of Hereward, and widow, first of Griffin of Wales, andthen of Harold, lived rich and safe in Chester. Godiva, the Countess,owned, so antiquarians say, manors from Cheshire to Lincolnshire,which would be now yearly worth the income of a great duke. Agatha, theHungarian, widow of Edmund the outlaw, dwelt at Romsey, in Hampshire,under William's care. Her son, Edward Etheling, the rightful heirof England, was treated by William not only with courtesy, but withaffection; and allowed to rebel, when he did rebel, with impunity. Forthe descendant of Rollo, the heathen Viking, had become a civilized,chivalrous, Christian knight. His mighty forefather would have split theEtheling's skull with his own axe. A Frank king would have shaved theyoung man's head, and immersed him in a monastery. An eastern sultanwould have thrust out his eyes, or strangled him at once. But William,however cruel, however unscrupulous, had a knightly heart, and somewhatof a Christian conscience; and his conduct to his only lawful rival is anoble trait amid many sins.

  So far all went well, till William went back to France; to be likened,not as his ancestors, to the gods of Valhalla, or the barbarous anddestroying Viking of mythic ages, but to Caesar, Pompey, Vespasian, andthe civilized and civilizing heroes of classic Rome.

  But while he sat at the Easter feast at Fecamp, displaying to Franks,Flemings, and Bretons, as well as to his own Normans, the treasures ofEdward's palace at Westminster, and "more English wealth than could befound in the whole estate of Gaul"; while he sat there in his glory,with his young dupes, Edwin, Morcar, and Waltheof by his side, havingsent Harold's banner in triumph to the Pope, as a token that he hadconquered the Church as well as the nation of England; and havingfounded abbeys as thank-offerings to Him who had seemed to prosper himin his great crime: at that very hour the handwriting was on the wall,unseen by man; and he and his policy and his race were weighed in thebalance, and found wanting.

  For now broke out in England that wrong-doing, which endured as long asshe was a mere appanage and foreign farm of Norman kings, whose heartsand homes were across the seas in France. Fitz-Osbern, and Odo thewarrior-prelate, William's half-brother, had been left as his regents inEngland. Little do they seem to have cared for William's promise to theEnglish people that they were to be ruled still by the laws of Edwardthe Confessor, and that where a grant of land was made to a Norman, hewas to hold it as the Englishman had done before him, with no heavierburdens on himself, but with no heavier burdens on the poor folk whotilled the land for him. Oppression began, lawlessness, and violence;men were ill-treated on the highways; and women--what was worse--intheir own homes; and the regents abetted the ill-doers. "It seems," saysa most impartial historian, [Footnote: The late Sir F. Palgrave.] "asif the Normans, released from all authority, all restraint, all fear ofretaliation, determined to reduce the English nation to servitude, anddrive them to despair."

  In the latter attempt they succeeded but too soon; in the former, theysucceeded at last: but they paid dearly for their success.

  Hot young Englishmen began to emigrate. Some went to the court ofConstantinople, to join the Varanger guard, and have their chance ofa Polotaswarf like Harold Hardraade. Some went to Scotland to MalcolmCanmore, and brooded over return and revenge. But Harold's sons went totheir father's cousin; to Sweyn--Swend--Sweno Ulfsson, and called on himto come and reconquer England in the name of his uncle Canute the Great;and many an Englishman went with them.

  These things Gospatrick watched, as earl (so far as he could make anyone obey him in the utter subversion of all order) of the lands betweenForth and Tyne. And he determined to flee, ere evil befell him, to hiscousin Malcolm Canmore, taking with him Marlesweyn of Lincolnshire, whohad fought, it is said, by Harold's side at Hastings, and young Waltheofof York. But, moreover, having a head, and being indeed, as his finalsuccess showed, a man of ability and courage, he determined on a strokeof policy, which had incalculable after-effects on the history ofScotland. He persuaded Agatha the Hungarian, Margaret and Christina herdaughters, and Edgar the Etheling himself, to flee with him toScotland. How he contrived to send them messages to Romsey, far south inHampshire; how they contrived to escape to the Humber, and thence up tot
he Forth; this is a romance in itself, of which the chroniclers haveleft hardly a hint. But the thing was done; and at St. Margaret's Hope,as tradition tells, the Scottish king met, and claimed as his unwillingbride, that fair and holy maiden who was destined to soften his fiercepassions, to civilize and purify his people, and to become--if all hadtheir just dues--the true patron saint of Scotland.

  Malcolm Canmore promised a mighty army; Sweyn, a mighty fleet. Andmeanwhile, Eustace of Boulogne, the Confessor's brother-in-law, himselfa Norman, rebelled at the head of the down-trodden men of Kent; and theWelshmen were harrying Herefordshire with fire and sword, in revenge forNorman ravages.

  But as yet the storm did not burst. William returned, and with himsomething like order. He conquered Exeter; he destroyed churches andtowns to make his New Forest. He brought over his Queen Matilda withpomp and great glory; and with her, the Bayeux tapestry which she hadwrought with her own hands; and meanwhile Sweyn Ulfsson was too busythreatening Olaf Haroldsson, the new king of Norway, to sail forEngland; and the sons of King Harold of England had to seek help fromthe Irish Danes, and, ravaging the country round Bristol, be beaten offby the valiant burghers with heavy loss.

  So the storm did not burst; and need not have burst, it may be, atall, had William kept his plighted word. But he would not give his fairdaughter to Edwin. His Norman nobles, doubtless, looked upon such analliance as debasing to a civilized lady. In their eyes, theEnglishman was a barbarian; and though the Norman might well marry theEnglishwoman, if she had beauty or wealth, it was a dangerous precedentto allow the Englishman to marry the Norman woman, and that woman aprincess. Beside, there were those who coveted Edwin's broad lands;Roger de Montgomery, who already (it is probable) held part of themas Earl of Shrewsbury, had no wish to see Edwin the son-in-law of hissovereign. Be the cause what it may, William faltered, and refused;and Edwin and Morcar left the Court of Westminster in wrath. Waltheoffollowed them, having discovered--what he was weak enough continually toforget again--the treachery of the Norman. The young earls went off,one midlandward, one northward. The people saw their wrongs in thoseof their earls, and the rebellion burst forth at once, the Welsh underBlethyn, and the Cumbrians under Malcolm and Donaldbain, giving theirhelp in the struggle.

  It was the year 1069. A more evil year for England than even the year ofHastings.

  The rebellion was crushed in a few months. The great general marchedsteadily north, taking the boroughs one by one, storming, massacringyoung and old, burning, sometimes, whole towns, and leaving, as hewent on, a new portent, a Norman donjon--till then all but unseen inEngland--as a place of safety for his garrisons. At Oxford (sackedhorribly, and all but destroyed), at Warwick (destroyed utterly), atNottingham, at Stafford, at Shrewsbury, at Cambridge, on the huge barrowwhich overhangs the fen; and at York itself, which had opened its gates,trembling, to the great Norman strategist; at each doomed free boroughrose a castle, with its tall square tower within, its bailey around, andall the appliances of that ancient Roman science of fortification, ofwhich the Danes, as well as the Saxons, knew nothing. Their strugglehad only helped to tighten their bonds; and what wonder? There was amongthem neither unity nor plan nor governing mind and will. Hereward'swords had come true. The only man, save Gospatrick, who had a head inEngland, was Harold Godwinsson: and he lay in Waltham Abbey, while themonks sang masses for his soul.

  Edwin, Morcar, and Waltheof trembled before a genius superior to theirown,--a genius, indeed, which had not its equal then in Christendom.They came in and begged grace of the king. They got it. But Edwin'searldom was forfeited, and he and his brother became, from thenceforth,desperate men.

  Malcolm of Scotland trembled likewise, and asked for peace. The clans,it is said, rejoiced thereat, having no wish for a war which could buythem neither spoil nor land. Malcolm sent ambassadors to William, andtook that oath of fealty to the "Basileus of Britain," which more thanone Scottish king and kinglet had taken before,--with the secret proviso(which, during the Middle Ages, seems to have been thoroughly understoodin such cases by both parties), that he should be William's man just aslong as William could compel him to be so, and no longer.

  Then came cruel and unjust confiscations. Ednoth the standard-bearer hadfallen at Bristol, fighting for William against the Haroldssons, yetall his lands were given away to Normans. Edwin and Morcar's lands wereparted likewise; and--to specify cases which bear especially on thehistory of Hereward--Oger the Briton got many of Morcar's manors roundBourne, and Gilbert of Ghent many belonging to Marlesweyn about Lincolncity. And so did that valiant and crafty knight find his legs oncemore on other men's ground, and reappears in monkish story as "the mostdevout and pious earl, Gilbert of Ghent."

  What followed, Hereward heard not from flying rumors; but from one whohad seen and known and judged of all. [Footnote: For Gyda's coming toSt. Omer that year, see Ordericus Vitalis.]

  For one day, about this time, Hereward was riding out of the gate of St.Omer, when the porter appealed to him. Begging for admittance were sometwenty women, and a clerk or two; and they must needs see the chatelain.The chatelain was away. What should he do?

  Hereward looked at the party, and saw, to his surprise, that they wereEnglishwomen, and two of them women of rank, to judge from the richmaterials of their travel-stained and tattered garments. The ladiesrode on sorry country garrons, plainly hired from the peasants who drovethem. The rest of the women had walked; and weary and footsore enoughthey were.

  "You are surely Englishwomen?" asked he of the foremost, as he liftedhis cap.

  The lady bowed assent, beneath a heavy veil.

  "Then you are my guests. Let them pass in." And Hereward threw himselfoff his horse, and took the lady's bridle.

  "Stay," she said, with an accent half Wessex, half Danish. "I seek theCountess Judith, if it will please you to tell me where she lives."

  "The Countess Judith, lady, lives no longer in St. Omer. Since herhusband's death, she lives with her mother at Bruges."

  The lady made a gesture of disappointment.

  "It were best for you, therefore, to accept my hospitality, till suchtime as I can send you and your ladies on to Bruges."

  "I must first know who it is who offers me hospitality?"

  This was said so proudly, that Hereward answered proudly enough inreturn,--

  "I am Hereward Leofricsson, whom his foes call Hereward the outlaw, andhis friends Hereward the master of knights."

  She started, and threw her veil hack, looking intently at him. He, forhis part, gave but one glance, and then cried,--

  "Mother of Heaven! You are the great Countess!"

  "Yes, I was that woman once, if all be not a dream. I am now I knownot what, seeking hospitality--if I can believe my eyes and ears--ofGodiva's son."

  "And from Godiva's son you shall have it, as though you were Godiva'sself. God so deal with my mother, madam, as I will deal with you."

  "His father's wit, and his mother's beauty!" said the great Countess,looking upon him. "Too, too like my own lost Harold!"

  "Not so, my lady. I am a dwarf compared to him." And Hereward led thegarron on by the bridle, keeping his cap in hand, while all wonderedwho the dame could be, before whom Hereward the champion would so abasehimself.

  "Leofric's son does me too much honor. He has forgotten, in hischivalry, that I am Godwin's widow."

  "I have not forgotten that you are Sprakaleg's daughter, and niece ofCanute, king of kings. Neither have I forgotten that you are an Englishlady, in times in which all English folk are one, and all old Englishfeuds are wiped away."

  "In English blood. Ah! if these last words of yours were true, as you,perhaps, might make them true, England might be saved even yet."

  "Saved?"

  "If there were one man in it, who cared for aught but himself."

  Hereward was silent and thoughtful.

  He had sent Martin back to his house, to tell Torfrida to prepare bathand food; for the Countess Gyda, with all her train, was coming to beher guest. And w
hen they entered the court, Torfrida stood ready.

  "Is this your lady?" asked Gyda, as Hereward lifted her from her horse.

  "I am his lady, and your servant," said Torfrida, bowing.

  "Child! child! Bow not to me. Talk not of servants to a wretched slave,who only longs to crawl into some hole and die, forgetting all she wasand all she had."

  And the great Countess reeled with weariness and woe, and fell uponTorfrida's neck.

  A tall veiled lady next her helped to support her; and between themthey almost carried her through the hall, and into Torfrida's bestguest-chamber.

  And there they gave her wine, and comforted her, and let her weep awhilein peace.

  The second lady had unveiled herself, displaying a beauty which wasstill brilliant, in spite of sorrow, hunger, the stains of travel, andmore than forty years of life.

  "She must be Gunhilda," guessed Torfrida to herself, and not amiss.

  She offered Gyda a bath, which she accepted eagerly, like a true Dane.

  "I have not washed for weeks. Not since we sat starving on theFlat-Holme there, in the Severn sea. I have become as foul as my ownfortunes: and why not? It is all of a piece. Why should not beggars begunwashed?"

  But when Torfrida offered Gunhilda the bath she declined.

  "I have done, lady, with such carnal vanities. What use in cleansingthat body which is itself unclean, and whitening the outside of thissepulchre? If I can but cleanse my soul fit for my heavenly Bridegroom,the body may become--as it must at last--food for worms."

  "She will needs enter religion, poor child," said Gyda; "and whatwonder?"

  "I have chosen the better part, and it shall not be taken from me."

  "Taken! taken! Hark to her! She means to mock me, the proud nun, withthat same 'taken.'"

  "God forbid, mother!"

  "Then why say taken, to me from whom all is taken?--husband, sons,wealth, land, renown, power,--power which I loved, wretch that I was, aswell as husband and as sons? Ah God! the girl is right. Better to rot inthe convent, than writhe in the world. Better never to have had, than tohave had and lost."

  "Amen!" said Gunhilda. "'Blessed are the barren, and they that nevergave suck,' saith the Lord."

  "No! Not so!" cried Torfrida. "Better, Countess, to have had and lost,than never to have had at all. The glutton was right, swine as he was,when he said that not even Heaven could take from him the dinners he hadeaten. How much more we, if we say, not even Heaven can take from usthe love wherewith we have loved. Will not our souls be richer thereby,through all eternity?"

  "In Purgatory?" asked Gunhilda.

  "In Purgatory, or where else you will. I love my love; and though mylove prove false, he has been true; though he trample me under foot, hehas held me in his bosom; though he kill me, he has lived for me. What Ihave had will still be mine, when that which I have shall fail me."

  "And you would buy short joy with lasting woe?"

  "That would I, like a brave man's child. I say,--the present is mine,and I will enjoy it, as greedily as a child. Let the morrow take thoughtfor the things of itself.--Countess, your bath is ready."

  Nineteen years after, when the great conqueror lay, tossing with agonyand remorse, upon his dying bed, haunted by the ghosts of his victims,the clerks of St. Saviour's in Bruges city were putting up a leadentablet (which remains, they say, unto this very day) to the memory ofone whose gentle soul had gently passed away. "Charitable to the poor,kind and agreeable to her attendants, courteous to strangers, and onlysevere to herself," Gunhilda had lingered on in a world of war andcrime; and had gone, it may be, to meet Torfrida beyond the grave, andthere finish their doubtful argument.

  The Countess was served with food in Torfrida's chamber. Hereward andhis wife refused to sit, and waited on her standing.

  "I wish to show these saucy Flemings," said he, "that an Englishprincess is a princess still in the eyes of one more nobly born than anyof them."

  But after she had eaten, she made Torfrida sit before her on the bed,and Hereward likewise; and began to talk; eagerly, as one who hadnot unburdened her mind for many weeks; and eloquently too, as becameSprakaleg's daughter and Godwin's wife.

  She told them how she had fled from the storm of Exeter, with a troopof women, who dreaded the brutalities of the Normans. [Footnote: To doWilliam justice, he would not allow his men to enter the city while theywere blood-hot; and so prevented, as far as he could, the excesses whichGyda had feared.] How they had wandered up through Devon, found fishers'boats at Watchet in Somersetshire, and gone off to the little desertisland of the Flat-Holme, in hopes of there meeting with the Irishfleet, which her sons, Edmund and Godwin, were bringing against the Westof England. How the fleet had never come, and they had starved for manydays; and how she had bribed a passing merchantman to take her and herwretched train to the land of Baldwin the Debonnaire, who might havepity on her for the sake of his daughter Judith, and Tosti her husbandwho died in his sins.

  And at his name, her tears began to flow afresh; fallen in hisoverweening pride,--like Sweyn, like Harold, like herself--

  "The time was, when I would not weep. If I could, I would not. For ayear, lady, after Senlac, I sat like a stone. I hardened my heart likea wall of brass, against God and man. Then, there upon the Flat-Holme,feeding on shell-fish, listening to the wail of the sea-fowl, lookingoutside the wan water for the sails which never came, my heart brokedown in a moment. And I heard a voice crying, 'There is no help in man,go thou to God.' And I answered, That were a beggar's trick, to goto God in need, when I went not to him in plenty. No. Without GodI planned, and without Him I must fail. Without Him I went into thebattle, and without Him I must bide the brunt. And at best, Can He giveme back my sons? And I hardened my heart again like a stone, and shed notear till I saw your fair face this day."

  "And now!" she said, turning sharply on Hereward, "what do you do here?Do you not know that your nephews' lands are parted between grooms fromAngers and scullions from Normandy?"

  "So much the worse for both them and the grooms."

  "Sir?"

  "You forget, lady, that I am an outlaw."

  "But do you not know that your mother's lands are seized likewise?"

  "She will take refuge with her grandsons, who are, as I hear, again ongood terms with their new master, showing thereby a most laudable andChristian spirit of forgiveness."

  "On good terms? Do you not know, then, that they are fighting again,outlaws, and desperate at the Frenchman's treachery? Do you not knowthat they have been driven out of York, after defending the city streetby street, house by house? Do you not know that there is not an oldman or a child in arms left in York; and that your nephews, and the fewfighting men who were left, went down the Humber in boats, and north toScotland, to Gospatrick and Waltheof? Do you not know that your motheris left alone--at Bourne, or God knows where--to endure at the hands ofNorman ruffians what thousands more endure?"

  Hereward made no answer, but played with his dagger.

  "And do you not know that England is ready to burst into a blaze, ifthere be one man wise enough to put the live coal into the right place?That Sweyn Ulffson, his kinsman, or Osbern, his brother, will surelyland there within the year with a mighty host? And that if there be oneman in England of wit enough, and knowledge enough of war, to lead thearmies of England, the Frenchman may be driven into the sea--Is thereany here who understands English?"

  "None but ourselves."

  "And Canute's nephew sit on Canute's throne?"

  Hereward still played with his dagger.

  "Not the sons of Harold, then?" asked he, after a while.

  "Never! I promise you that--I, Countess Gyda, their grandmother."

  "Why promise me, of all men, O great lady?"

  "Because--I will tell you after. But this I say, my curse on thegrandson of mine who shall try to seize that fatal crown, which cost thelife of my fairest, my noblest, my wisest, my bravest!"

  Hereward bowed his head, as if consenting to the prai
se of Harold. Buthe knew who spoke; and he was thinking within himself: "Her curse may beon him who shall seize, and yet not on him to whom it is given."

  "All that they, young and unskilful lads, have a right to ask is, theirfather's earldoms and their father's lands. Edwin and Morcar would keeptheir earldoms as of right. It is a pity that there is no lady of thehouse of Godwin, whom we could honor by offering her to one of yournephews, in return for their nobleness in giving Aldytha to my Harold.But this foolish girl here refuses to wed--"

  "And is past forty," thought Hereward to himself.

  "However, some plan to join the families more closely together might bethought of. One of the young earls might marry Judith here. [Footnote:Tosti's widow, daughter of Baldwin of Flanders] Waltheof would haveNorthumbria, in right of his father, and ought to be well content,--foralthough she is somewhat older than he, she is peerlessly beautiful,--tomarry your niece Aldytha." [Footnote: Harold's widow.]

  "And Gospatrick?"

  "Gospatrick," she said, with a half-sneer, "will be as sure, as he isable, to get something worth having for himself out of any medley. Lethim have Scotch Northumbria, if he claim it. He is a Dane, and our workwill be to make a Danish England once and forever."

  "But what of Sweyn's gallant holders and housecarles, who are to help todo this mighty deed?"

  "Senlac left gaps enough among the noblemen of the South, which they canfill up, in the place of the French scum who now riot over Wessex. Andif that should not suffice, what higher honor for me, or for my daughterthe Queen-Dowager, than to devote our lands to the heroes who have wonthem back for us?"

  Hereward hoped inwardly that Gyda would be as good as her word; for hergreedy grasp had gathered to itself, before the Battle of Hastings, noless than six-and-thirty thousand acres of good English soil.

  "I have always heard," said he, bowing, "that if the Lady Gyda had beenborn a man, England would have had another all-seeing and all-daringstatesman, and Earl Godwin a rival, instead of a helpmate. Now I believewhat I have heard."

  But Torfrida looked sadly at the Countess. There was something pitiablein the sight of a woman ruined, bereaved, seemingly hopeless, portioningout the very land from which she was a fugitive; unable to restrain thepassion for intrigue, which had been the toil and the bane of her sadand splendid life.

  "And now," she went on, "surely some kind saint brought me, even on myfirst landing, to you of all living men."

  "Doubtless the blessed St. Bertin, beneath whose shadow we repose herein peace," said Hereward, somewhat dryly.

  "I will go barefoot to his altar to-morrow, and offer my last jewel,"said Gunhilda.

  "You," said Gyda, without noticing her daughter, "are, above all men,the man who is needed." And she began praising Hereward's valor, hisfame, his eloquence, his skill as a general and engineer; and when hesuggested, smiling, that he was an exile and an outlaw, she insistedthat he was all the fitter from that very fact. He had no enemies amongthe nobles. He had been mixed up in none of the civil wars and bloodfeuds of the last fifteen years. He was known only as that which hewas, the ablest captain of his day,--the only man who could cope withWilliam, the only man whom all parties in England would alike obey.

  And so, with flattery as well as with truth, she persuaded, if notHereward, at least Torfrida, that he was the man destined to freeEngland once more; and that an earldom--anything which he chose toask--would be the sure reward of his assistance.

  "Torfrida," said Hereward that night, "kiss me well; for you will notkiss me again for a while."

  "What?"

  "I am going to England to-morrow."

  "Alone?"

  "Alone. I and Martin to spy out the land; and a dozen or so ofhousecarles to take care of the ship in harbor."

  "But you have promised to fight the Viscount of Pinkney."

  "I will be back again in time for him. Not a word,--I must go toEngland, or go mad."

  "But Countess Gyda? Who will squire her to Bruges?"

  "You, and the rest of my men. You must tell her all. She has a woman'sheart, and will understand. And tell Baldwin I shall be back within themonth, if I am alive on land or water."

  "Hereward, Hereward, the French will kill you!"

  "Not while I have your armor on. Peace, little fool! Are you actuallyafraid for Hereward at last?"

  "O heavens! when am I not afraid for you!" and she cried herself tosleep upon his bosom. But she knew that it was the right, and knightly,and Christian thing to do.

  Two days after, a long ship ran out of Calais, and sailed away north andeast.