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

of which, as out of Rockinghamshire, have been cut those fair parks and “Handsome houses, Where the wealthy nobles dwell”;

past which the Lord of Burleigh led his Welsh bride to that Burghley House by Stamford town, well-nigh the noblest of them all, which was, in Hereward’s time, deep wood, and freestone down. Round Exton, and Normanton, and that other Burley on the Hill; on through those Morkery woods, which still retain the name of Hereward’s ill-fated nephew; north by Irnham and Corby; on to Belton and Syston (par nobile), and southwest again to those still wooded heights, whence all-but-royal Belvoir looks out over the rich green vale below, did Hereward and his men range far and wide, harrying the Frenchman, and hunting the dun deer. Stags there were in plenty. There remain to this day, in Grimsthorpe Park by Bourne, the descendants of the very deer which Earl Leofric and Earl Algar, and after them Hereward the outlaw, hunted in the Bruneswald.

Deep-tangled forest filled the lower claylands, swarming with pheasant, roe, badger, and more wolves than were needed. Broken, park-like glades covered the upper freestones, where the red deer came out from harbor for their evening graze, and the partridges and plovers whirred up, and the hares and rabbits loped away, innumerable; and where hollies and ferns always gave dry lying for the night. What did men need more, whose bodies were as stout as their hearts?

They were poachers and robbers; and why not? The deer had once been theirs, the game, the land, the serfs; and if Godric of Corby slew the Irnham deer, burned Irnham Hall over the head of the new Norman lord, and thought no harm, he did but what he would with that which had been once his own.

Easy it was to dash out by night and make a raid; to harry the places which they once had owned themselves, in the vale of Belvoir to the west, or to the east in the strip of fertile land which sloped down into the fen, and levy black-mail in Rippinghale, or Folkingham, or Aslackby, or Sleaford, or any other of the “Vills” (now thriving villages) which still remain in Domesday-book, and written against them the ugly and significant,—

“In Tatenai habuerunt Turgisle et Suen IIII. Carrucas terae,” &c. “Hoc Ivo Taillebosc ibi habet in dominio,”—all, that is, that the wars had left of them.

The said Turgisle (Torkill or Turketil misspelt by Frenchmen) and Sweyn, and many a good man more,—for Ivo’s possessions were enormous,—were thorns in the sides of Ivo and his men which must be extracted, and the Bruneswald a nest of hornets, which must be smoked out at any cost.

Wherefore it befell, that once upon a day there came riding to Hereward in the Bruneswald a horseman all alone.

And meeting with Hereward and his men he made signs of amity, and bowed himself low, and pulled out of his purse a letter, protesting that he was an Englishman and a “good felawe,” and that, though he came from Lincoln town, a friend to the English had sent him.

That was believable enough, for Hereward had his friends and his spies far and wide.

And when he opened the letter, and looked first, like a wary man, at the signature, a sudden thrill went through him.

It was Alftruda’s.

If he was interested in her, considering what had passed between them from her childhood, it was nothing to be ashamed of. And yet somehow he felt ashamed of that same sudden thrill.

And Hereward had reason to be ashamed. He had been faithful to Torfrida,—a virtue most rare in those days. Few were faithful then, save, it may be, Baldwin of Mons to his tyrant and idol, the sorceress Richilda; and William of Normandy,—whatever were his other sins,—to his wise and sweet and beautiful Matilda. The stories of his coldness and cruelty to her seem to rest on no foundation. One need believe them as little as one does the myth of one chronicler, that when she tried to stop him from some expedition, and clung to him as he sat upon his horse, he smote his spur so deep into her breast that she fell dead. The man had self-control, and feared God in his own wild way,—therefore it was, perhaps, that he conquered.

And Hereward had been faithful likewise to Torfrida, and loved her with an overwhelming adoration, as all true men love. And for that very reason he was the more aware that his feeling for Alftruda was strangely like his feeling for Torfrida, and yet strangely different.

There was nothing in the letter that he should not have read. She called him her best and dearest friend, twice the savior of her life. What could she do in return, but, at any risk to herself, try and save his life? The French were upon him. The posse comitatus of seven counties was raising. “Northampton, Cambridge, Lincoln, Holland, Leicester, Huntingdon, Warwick,” were coming to the Bruneswald to root him out.

“Lincoln?” thought Hereward. “That must be Gilbert of Ghent, and Oger the Breton. No! Gilbert is not coming, Sir Ascelin is coming for him. Holland? That is my friend Ivo Taillebois. Well, we shall have the chance of paying off old scores. Northampton? The earl thereof just now is the pious and loyal Waltheof, as he is of Huntingdon and Cambridge. Is he going to join young Fitz-Osbern from Warwick and Leicester, to root out the last Englishman? Why not? That would be a deed worthy of the man who married Judith, and believes in the powers that be, and eats dirt daily at William’s table.”

Then he read on.

Ascelin had been mentioned, he remarked, three or four times in the letter, which was long, as from one lingering over the paper, wishing to say more than she dared. At the end was a hint of the reason:—

“O, that having saved me twice, you could save me once more. Know you that Gospatrick has been driven from his earldom on charge of treason, and that Waltheof has Northumbria in his place, as well as the parts round you? And that Gospatrick is fled to Scotland again, with his sons,—my man among them? And now the report comes, that my man is slain in battle on the Border; and that I am to be given away,—as I have been given away twice before,—to Ascelin. This I know, as I know all, not only from him of Ghent, but from him of Peterborough, Ascelin’s uncle.”

Hereward laughed a laugh of cynical triumph,—pardonable enough in a broken man.

“Gospatrick! the wittol! the woodcock! looking at the springe, and then coolly putting his head therein. Throwing the hatchet after the helve! selling his soul and never getting the price of it! I foresaw it, foretold it, I believe to Alftruda herself,—foretold that he would not keep his bought earldom three years. What a people we are, we English, if Gospatrick is,—as he is,—the shrewdest man among us, with a dash of canny Scots blood too. ‘Among the one-eyed, the blind is king,’ says Torfrida, out of her wise ancients, and blind we are, if he is our best. No. There is one better man left I trust, one that will never be fool enough to put his head into the wolf’s mouth, and trust the Norman, and that is Hereward the outlaw.”

And Hereward boasted to himself, at Gospatrick’s expense, of his own superior wisdom, till his eye