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

down without mercy by the English. The war had been “à l’outrance” for a long while. None gave or asked quarter. The knights might be kept for ransom: they had money. The wretched men of the lower classes, who had none, were slain: as they would have slain the English.

Soon they heard the noise of battle; and saw horsemen and footmen pell-mell, tangled in an abattis, from behind which archers and cross-bowmen shot them down in safety.

Hereward dashed forward, with the shout of Torfrida; and at that the French, taken in the flank, fled, and were smitten as they fled, hip and thigh.

Hereward bade them spare a fugitive, and bring him to him.

“I give you your life; so run, and carry my message. That is Taillebois’s banner there forward, is it not?”

“Yes.”

“Then go after him, and tell him,—Hereward has the Abbot of Burgh, and half a dozen knights, safe by the heels. And unless Ivo clears the wood of his men by nightfall, I will hang every one of them up for the crows before morning.”

Ivo got the message, and having had enough fighting for the day, drew off, says the chronicler, for the sake of the Abbot and his fellow-captives.

Two hours after the Abbot and the other prisoners were sitting, unbound, but unarmed, in the forest encampment, waiting for a right good meal, with Torfrida bustling about them, after binding up the very few wounded among their own men.

Every courtesy was shown them; and their hearts were lifted up, as they beheld approaching among the trees great caldrons of good soup; forest salads; red deer and roe roasted on the wood embers; spits of pheasants and partridges, larks and buntings, thrust off one by one by fair hands into the burdock leaves which served as platters; and last, but not least, jacks of ale and wine, appearing mysteriously from a cool old stone quarry. Abbot Thorold ate to his heart’s content, complimented every one, vowed he would forswear all Norman cooks and take to the greenwood himself, and was as gracious and courtly as if he had been at the new palace at Winchester.

And all the more for this reason,—that he had intended to overawe the English barbarians by his polished Norman manners. He found those of Hereward and Torfrida, at least, as polished as his own.

“I am glad you are content, Lord Abbot,” said Torfrida; “I trust you prefer dining with me to burning me, as you meant to do.”

“I burn such peerless beauty! I injure a form made only for the courts of kings! Heaven and all saints, knighthood and all chivalry, forbid. What Taillebois may have said, I know not! I am no more answerable for his intentions than I am for his parentage,—or his success this day. Let churls be churls, and wood-cutters wood-cutters. I at least, thanks to my ancestors, am a gentleman.”

“And, as a gentleman, will of course contribute to the pleasure of your hosts. It will surely please you to gratify us with one stave at least of that song, which has made your name famous among all knights,” holding out a harp.

“I blush; but obey. A harp in the greenwood? A court in the wilderness! What joy!”

And the vain Abbot took the harp, and said,—“These, if you will allow my modesty to choose, are the staves on which I especially pride myself. The staves which Taillefer—you will pardon my mentioning him—”

“Why pardon? A noble minstrel he was, and a brave warrior, though our foe. And often have I longed to hear him, little thinking that I should hear instead the maker himself.”

So said Hereward; and the Abbot sang—those wondrous staves, where Roland, left alone of all the Paladins, finds death come on him fast. And on the Pyrenaean peak, beneath the pine, he lays himself, his “face toward the ground, and under him his sword and magic horn, that Charles, his lord, may say, and all his folk, The gentle count, he died a conqueror”; and then “turns his eyes southward toward Spain, betakes himself to remember many things; of so many lands which he conquered valiantly; of pleasant France; of the men of his lineage; of Charlemagne, his lord, who brought him up. He could not help to weep and sigh, but yet himself he would not forget. He bewailed his sins, and prayed God’s mercy:—True Father, who ne’er yet didst lie, who raised St. Lazarus from death, and guarded Daniel from the lions, guard my soul from all perils, for the sins which in my life I did! His right glove then he offered to God; St. Gabriel took it from his hand; on his arm the chief bowed down, with joined hands he went unto his end. God sent down his angel cherubim, and St. Michael, whom men call ‘del peril.’ Together with them, St. Gabriel, he came; the soul of the count they bore to Paradise.”

And the Abbot ended, sadly and gently, without that wild “Aoi!” the war-cry with which he usually ends his staves. And the wild men of the woods were softened and saddened by the melody; and as many as understood French, said, when he finished, “Amen! so may all good knights die!”

“Thou art a great maker, Abbot! They told truths of thee. Sing us more of thy great courtesy.”

And he sang them the staves of the Olifant, the magic horn,—how Roland would not sound it in his pride, and sounded it at Turpin’s bidding, but too late; and how his temples burst with that great blast, and Charles and all his peers heard it through the gorges, leagues away in France. And then his “Aoi” rang forth so loud and clear, like any trumpet blast, under the oaken glades, that the wild men leaped to their feet, and shouted, “Health to the gleeman! Health to the Abbot Thorold!”

“I have won them,” thought the Abbot to himself. Strange mixture that man must have been, if all which is told of him is true; a very typical Norman, compact of cunning and ferocity, chivalry and poetry, vanity and superstition, and yet able enough to help to conquer England for the Pope.

Then he pressed Hereward to sing, with many compliments; and Hereward sang, and sang again, and all his men crowded round him as the outlaws of Judaea may have crowded round David in Carmel or Hebron, to hear, like children, old ditties which they loved the better the oftener they heard them.

“No wonder that you can keep these knights together, if you can charm them thus with song. Would that I could hear you singing thus in William’s hall.”

“No more of that, Sir Abbot. The only music which I have for William is the music of steel on steel.”

Hereward answered sharply, because he was half of Thorold’s mind.

“Now,” said Torfrida, as it grew late, “we must ask our noble guest for what he can give us as easily and well as he can song,—and that is news. We hear naught here in the greenwood, and must throw oneself on the kindness of a chance visitor.”

The Abbot leapt at the bait, and told them news, court gossip, bringing in great folks’ names and his own, as often and as familiarly mingled as he