Hereward, the Last of the English

  CHAPTER VIII.

  HOW A FAIR LADY EXERCISED THE MECHANICAL ART TO WIN HEREWARD'S LOVE.

  The fair Torfrida sat in an upper room of her mother's house in St.Omer, alternately looking out of the window and at a book of mechanics.In the garden outside, the wryneck (as is his fashion in May) wascalling Pi-pi-pi among the gooseberry bushes, till the cobwalls rangagain. In the book was a Latin recipe for drying the poor wryneck,and using him as a philtre which should compel the love of any persondesired. Mechanics, it must be understood, in those days were consideredas identical with mathematics, and those again with astrology and magic;so that the old chronicler, who says that Torfrida was skilled in "themechanic art," uses the word in the same sense as does the author ofthe "History of Ramsey," who tells us how a certain holy bishop of St.Dunstan's party, riding down to Corfe through the forest, saw the wickedqueen-mother Elfrida (her who had St. Edward stabbed at Corfe Gate)exercising her "mechanic art," under a great tree; in plain English,performing heathen incantations; and how, when she saw that she wasdiscovered, she tempted him to deadly sin: but when she found himproof against allurement, she had him into her bower; and there theenchantress and her ladies slew him by thrusting red-hot bodkins underhis arms, so that the blessed man was martyred without any sign ofwound. Of all which let every man believe as much as he list.

  Torfrida had had peculiar opportunities of learning mechanics. Thefairest and richest damsel in St. Omer, she had been left early by herfather an orphan, to the care of a superstitious mother and of a learneduncle, the Abbot of St. Bertin. Her mother was a Provencale, one ofthose Arlesiennes whose dark Greek beauty still shines, like diamondsset in jet, in the doorways of the quaint old city. Gay enough in heryouth, she had, like a true Southern woman, taken to superstition in herold age; and spent her days in the churches, leaving Torfrida to do andlearn what she would. Her nurse, moreover, was a Lapp woman, carried offin some pirating foray, and skilled in all the sorceries for whichthe Lapps were famed throughout the North. Her uncle, partly fromgood-nature, partly from a pious hope that she might "enter religion,"and leave her wealth to the Church, had made her his pupil, and taughther the mysteries of books; and she had proved to be a strangely aptscholar. Grammar, rhetoric, Latin prose and poetry, such as were taughtin those days, she mastered ere she was grown up. Then she fell uponromance, and Charlemagne and his Paladins, the heroes of Troy, Alexanderand his generals, peopled her imagination. She had heard, too, of thegreat necromancer Virgilius (for into such the middle age transformedthe poet), and, her fancy already excited by her Lapp nurse's occultscience, she began eagerly to court forbidden lore.

  Forbidden, indeed, magic was by the Church in public; but as a reality,not as an imposture. Those whose consciences were tough and their faithweak, had little scruple in applying to a witch, and asking helpfrom the powers below, when the saints above were slack to hear them.Churchmen, even, were bold enough to learn the mysteries of nature,Algebra, Judicial Astrology, and the occult powers of herbs, stones, andanimals, from the Mussulman doctors of Cordova and Seville; and, likePope Gerbert, mingle science and magic, in a fashion excusable enough indays when true inductive science did not exist.

  Nature had her miraculous powers,--how far good, how far evil, who couldtell? The belief that God was the sole maker and ruler of the universewas confused and darkened by the cross-belief, that the material worldhad fallen under the dominion of Satan and his demons; that millionsof spirits, good and evil in every degree, exercised continually powersover crops and cattle, mines and wells, storms and lightning, health anddisease. Riches, honors, and royalties, too, were under the command ofthe powers of darkness. For that generation, which was but too apt totake its Bible in hand upside down, had somehow a firm faith in the wordof the Devil, and believed devoutly his somewhat startling assertion,that the kingdoms of the world were his, and the glory of them; for tohim they were delivered, and to whomsoever he would he gave them: whileit had a proportionally weak faith in our Lord's answer, that they wereto worship and serve the Lord God alone. How far these powers extended,how far they might be counteracted, how far lawfully employed, werequestions which exercised the minds of men and produced a voluminousliterature for several centuries, till the search died out, for veryweariness of failure, at the end of the seventeenth century.

  The Abbot of St. Bertin, therefore, did not hesitate to keep in hisprivate library more than one volume which he would not have willinglylent to the simple monks under his charge; nor to Torfrida either, hadshe not acquired so complete a command over the good old man, that hecould deny her nothing.

  So she read of Gerbert, Pope Silvester II., who had died only ageneration back: how (to quote William of Malmesbury) "he learned atSeville till he surpassed Ptolemy with the astrolabe, Alcandrus inastronomy, and Julius Firmicus in judicial astrology; how he learnedwhat the singing and flight of birds portended, and acquired the artof calling up spirits from hell; and, in short, whatever--hurtful orhealthful--human curiosity had discovered, besides the lawful sciencesof arithmetic and astronomy, music and geometry"; how he acquired fromthe Saracens the abacus (a counting table); how he escaped from theMoslem magician, his tutor, by making a compact with the foul fiend, andputting himself beyond the power of magic, by hanging himself undera wooden bridge so as to touch neither earth nor water; how he taughtRobert, King of France, and Otto the Kaiser; how he made an hydraulicorgan which played tunes by steam, which stood even then in theCathedral of Rheims; how he discovered in the Campus Martius at Romewondrous treasures, and a golden king and queen, golden courtiers andguards, all lighted by a single carbuncle, and guarded by a boy witha bent bow; who, when Gerbert's servant stole a golden knife, shot anarrow at that carbuncle, and all was darkness, and yells of demons.

  All this Torfrida had read; and read, too, how Gerbert's brazen head hadtold him that he should be Pope, and not die till he had sung mass atJerusalem; and how both had come true,--the latter in mockery; for hewas stricken with deadly sickness in Rome, as he sang mass at the churchcalled Jerusalem, and died horribly, tearing himself in pieces.

  Which terrible warning had as little effect on Torfrida as otherterrible warnings have on young folk, who are minded to eat of the fruitof the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

  So Torfrida beguiled her lonely life in that dull town, looking outover dreary flats and muddy dikes, by a whole dream-world of fantasticimaginations, and was ripe and ready for any wild deed which her wildbrain might suggest.

  Pure she was all the while, generous and noble-hearted, and with a deepand sincere longing--as one soul in ten thousand has--after knowledgefor its own sake; but ambitious exceedingly, and that not of monasticsanctity. She laughed to scorn the notion of a nunnery; and laughedto scorn equally the notion of marrying any knight, however much of aprudhomme, whom she had yet seen. Her uncle and Marquis Baldwin couldhave between them compelled her, as an orphan heiress, to marry whomthey liked. But Torfrida had as yet bullied the Abbot and coaxed theCount successfully. Lances had been splintered, helmets split, and morethan one life lost in her honor; but she had only, as the best safeguardshe could devise, given some hint of encouragement to one Ascelin, atall knight of St. Valeri, the most renowned bully of those parts, bybestowing on him a scrap of ribbon, and bidding him keep it against allcomers. By this means she insured the personal chastisement of all otheryouths who dared to lift their eyes to her, while she by no means boundherself to her spadassin of St. Valeri. It was all very brutal, but sowas the time; and what better could a poor lady do in days when noman's life or woman's honor was safe, unless--as too many were forcedto do--she retired into a cloister, and got from the Church that peacewhich this world certainly could not give, and, happily, dared not takeaway?

  The arrival of Hereward and his men had of course stirred the greatcurrent of her life, and indeed that of St. Omer, usually as stagnant asthat of the dikes round its wall. Who the unknown champion was,--forhis name of "Naemansson" showed that he was concealing something atleast,
--whence he had come, and what had been his previous exploits,busied all the gossips of the town. Would he and his men rise andplunder the abbey? Was not the chatelain mad in leaving young Arnulfwith him all day? Madder still, in taking him out to battle against theCount of Guisnes? He might be a spy,--the _avant-courrier_ of some greatinvading force. He was come to spy out the nakedness of the land, andwould shortly vanish, to return with Harold Hardraade of Norway, orSweyn of Denmark, and all their hosts. Nay, was he not Harold Hardraadehimself in disguise? And so forth. All which Torfrida heard, and thoughtwithin herself that, be he who he might, she should like to look on himagain.

  Then came the news how the very first day that he had gone out againstthe Count of Guisnes he had gallantly rescued a wounded man. A day ortwo after came fresh news of some doughty deed; and then another, andanother. And when Hereward returned, after a week's victorious fighting,all St. Omer was in the street to stare at him.

  Then Torfrida heard enough, and, had it been possible, more than enough,of Hereward and his prowess.

  And when they came riding in, the great Marquis at the head of them all,with Robert le Frison on one side of him, and on the other Hereward,looking "as fresh as flowers in May," she looked down on him out of herlittle lattice in the gable, and loved him, once and for all, with allher heart and soul.

  And Hereward looked up at her and her dark blue eyes and dark ravenlocks, and thought her the fairest thing that he had ever seen, andasked who she might be, and heard; and as he heard he forgot all aboutthe Sultan's daughter, and the Princess of Constantinople, and the Fairyof Brocheliaunde, and all the other pretty birds which were still in thebush about the wide world; and thought for many a day of naught butthe pretty bird which he held--so conceited was he of his own powers ofwinning her--there safe in hand in St. Omer.

  So he cast about to see her, and to win her love. And she cast about tosee him, and win his love. But neither saw the other for a while; andit might have been better for one of them had they never seen the otheragain.

  If Torfrida could have foreseen, and foreseen, and foreseen----why, ifshe were true woman, she would have done exactly what she did, and takenthe bitter with the sweet, the unknown with the known, as we all must doin life, unless we wish to live and die alone.