Hereward, the Last of the English by Charles Kingsley (easy to read books for adults list TXT) 📕

swung round again, telling each other, in their manifold pipings, how all the reed-ronds teemed with mailed men. And all above, the sky was cloudless blue.

And then came a trample, a roll of many feet on the soft spongy peat, a low murmur which rose into wild shouts of “Dex Aie!” as a human tide poured along the causeway, and past the witch of Brandon Heath.

“‘Dex Aie?’” quoth William, with a sneer. “‘Debbles Aie!’ would fit better.”

“If, Sire, the powers above would have helped us, we should have been happy enough to——But if they would not, it is not our fault if we try below,” said Ivo Taillebois.

William laughed. “It is well to have two strings to one’s bow, sir. Forward, men! forward!” shouted he, riding out to the bridge-end, under the tower.

“Forward!” shouted Ivo Taillebois.

“Forward!” shouted the hideous hag overhead. “The spirit of the well fights for you.”

“Fight for yourselves,” said William.

There was twenty yards of deep clear water between Frenchman and Englishman. Only twenty yards. Not only the arrows and arblast quarrels, but heavy hand-javelins, flew across every moment; every now and then a man toppled forward, and plunged into the blue depth among the eels and pike, to find his comrades of the summer before; then the stream was still once more. The coots and water-hens swam in and out of the reeds, and wondered what it was all about. The water-lilies flapped upon the ripple, as lonely as in the loneliest mere. But their floats were soon broken, their white cups stained with human gore. Twenty yards of deep clear water. And treasure inestimable to win by crossing it.

They thrust out baulks, canoes, pontoons; they crawled upon them like ants, and thrust out more yet beyond, heedless of their comrades, who slipped, and splashed, and sank, holding out vain hands to hands too busy to seize them. And always the old witch jabbered overhead, with her cantrips, pointing, mumming, praying for the storm; while all above, the sky was cloudless blue.

And always on the mound opposite, while darts and quarrels whistled round her head, stood Torfrida, pointing with outstretched scornful finger at the stragglers in the river, and chanting loudly, what the Frenchmen could not tell; but it made their hearts, as it was meant to do, melt like wax within them.

“They have a counter witch to yours, Ivo, it seems; and a fairer one. I am afraid the devils, especially if Asmodeus be at hand, are more likely to listen to her than to that old broomstick-rider aloft.”

“Fair is, that fair cause has, Sir King.”

“A good argument for honest men, but none for fiends. What is the fair fiend pointing at so earnestly there?”

“Somewhat among the reeds. Hark to her now! She is singing, somewhat more like an angel than a fiend, I will say for her.”

And Torfrida’s bold song, coming clear and sweet across the water, rose louder and shriller till it almost drowned the jabbering of the witch.

“She sees more there than we do.”

“I see it!” cried William, smiting his hand upon his thigh. “Par le splendeur Dex! She has been showing them where to fire the reeds; and they have done it!”

A puff of smoke; a wisp of flame; and then another and another; and a canoe shot out from the reeds on the French shore, and glided into the reeds of the island.

“The reeds are on fire, men! Have a care,” shouted Ivo.

“Silence, fool! Frighten them once, and they will leap like sheep into that gulf. Men! right about! Draw off,—slowly and in order. We will attack again to-morrow.”

The cool voice of the great captain arose too late. A line of flame was leaping above the reed bed, crackling and howling before the evening breeze. The column on the causeway had seen their danger but too soon, and fled. But whither?

A shower of arrows, quarrels, javelins, fell upon the head of the column as it tried to face about and retreat, confusing it more and more. One arrow, shot by no common aim, went clean through William’s shield, and pinned it to the mailed flesh. He could not stifle a cry of pain.

“You are wounded, Sire. Ride for your life! It is worth that of a thousand of these churls,” and Ivo seized William’s bridle and dragged him, in spite of himself, through the cowering, shrieking, struggling crowd.

On came the flames, leaping and crackling, laughing and shrieking, like a live fiend. The archers and slingers In the boats cowered before it; and fell, scorched corpses, as it swept on. It reached the causeway, surged up, recoiled from the mass of human beings, then sprang over their heads and passed onwards, girding them with flame.

The reeds were burning around them; the timbers of the bridge caught fire; the peat and fagots smouldered beneath their feet. They sprang from the burning footway and plunged into the fathomless bog, covering their faces and eyes with scorched hands, and then sank in the black gurgling slime.

Ivo dragged William on, regardless of curses and prayers from his soldiery; and they reached the shore just in time to see between them and the water a long black smouldering writhing line; the morass to right and left, which had been a minute before deep reed, an open smutty pool, dotted with boatsful of shrieking and cursing men; and at the causeway-end the tower, with the flame climbing up its posts, and the witch of Brandon throwing herself desperately from the top, and falling dead upon the embers, a motionless heap of rags.

“Fool that you are! Fool that I was!” cried the great king, as he rolled off his horse at his tent door, cursing with rage and pain.

Ivo Taillebois sneaked off, sent over to Mildenhall for the second witch, and hanged her, as some small comfort to his soul. Neither did he forget to search the cabin till he found buried in a crock the bits of his own gold chain and various other treasures, for which the wretched old women had bartered their souls. All which he confiscated to his own use, as a much injured man.

The next day William withdrew his army. The men refused to face again that blood-stained pass. The English spells, they said, were stronger than theirs, or than the daring of brave men. Let William take Torfrida and burn her, as she had burned them, with reeds out of Willingham fen; then might they try to storm Ely again.

Torfrida saw them turn, flee, die in agony. Her work was done; her passion exhausted; her self-torture, and the mere weight of her fetters, which she had sustained during her passion, weighed her down; she dropped senseless on the turf, and lay in a trance for many hours.

Then she arose, and casting off her fetters and her sackcloth, was herself again: but a sadder woman till her dying day.