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

In those days a messenger came riding post to Bourne. The Countess Judith wished to visit the tomb of her late husband, Earl Waltheof; and asked hospitality on her road of Hereward and Alftruda.

Of course she would come with a great train, and the trouble and expense would be great. But the hospitality of those days, when money was scarce, and wine scarcer still, was unbounded, and a matter of course; and Alftruda was overjoyed. No doubt, Judith was the most unpopular person in England at that moment; called by all a traitress and a fiend. But she was an old acquaintance of Alftruda’s; she was the king’s niece; she was immensely rich, not only in manors of her own, but in manors, as Domesday-book testifies, about Lincolnshire and the counties round, which had belonged to her murdered husband,—which she had too probably received as the price of her treason. So Alftruda looked to her visit as to an honor which would enable her to hold her head high among the proud Norman dames, who despised her as the wife of an Englishman.

Hereward looked on the visit in a different light. He called Judith ugly names, not undeserved; and vowed that if she entered his house by the front door he would go out at the back. “Torfrida prophesied,” he said, “that she would betray her husband, and she had done it.”

“Torfrida prophesied? Did she prophesy that I should betray you likewise?” asked Alftruda, in a tone of bitter scorn.

“No, you handsome fiend: will you do it?”

“Yes; I am a handsome fiend, am I not?” and she bridled up her magnificent beauty, and stood over him as a snake stands over a mouse.

“Yes; you are handsome,—beautiful: I adore you.”

“And yet you will not do what I wish?”

“What you wish? What would I not do for you? what have I not done for you?”

“Then receive Judith. And now, go hunting, and bring me in game. I want deer, roe, fowls; anything and everything from the greatest to the smallest. Go and hunt.”

And Hereward trembled, and went.

There are flowers whose scent is so luscious that silly children will plunge their heads among them, drinking in their odor, to the exclusion of all fresh air. On a sudden sometimes comes a revulsion of the nerves. The sweet odor changes in a moment to a horrible one; and the child cannot bear for years after the scent which has once disgusted it by over-sweetness.

And so had it happened to Hereward. He did not love Alftruda now: he loathed, hated, dreaded her. And yet he could not take his eyes for a moment off her beauty. He watched every movement of her hand, to press it, obey it. He would have preferred instead of hunting, simply to sit and watch her go about the house at her work. He was spell-bound to a thing which he regarded with horror.

But he was told to go and hunt; and he went, with all his men, and sent home large supplies for the larder. And as he hunted, the free, fresh air of the forest comforted him, the free forest life came back to him, and he longed to be an outlaw once more, and hunt on forever. He would not go back yet, at least to face that Judith. So he sent back the greater part of his men with a story. He was ill; he was laid up at a farm-house far away in the forest, and begged the countess to excuse his absence. He had sent fresh supplies of game, and a goodly company of his men, knights and housecarles, who would escort her royally to Crowland.

Judith cared little for his absence; he was but an English barbarian. Alftruda was half glad to have him out of the way, lest his now sullen and uncertain temper should break out; and bowed herself to the earth before Judith, who patronized her to her heart’s content, and offered her slyly insolent condolences on being married to a barbarian. She herself could sympathize,—who more?

Alftruda might have answered with scorn that she was an Adeliza, and of better English blood than Judith’s Norman blood; but she had her ends to gain, and gained them.

For Judith was pleased to be so delighted with her that she kissed her lovingly, and said with much emotion that she required a friend who would support her through her coming trial; and who better than one who herself had suffered so much? Would she accompany her to Crowland?

Alftruda was overjoyed, and away they went.

And to Crowland they came; and to the tomb in the minster, whereof men said already that the sacred corpse within worked miracles of healing.

And Judith, habited in widow’s weeds, approached the tomb, and laid on it, as a peace-offering to the manes of the dead, a splendid pall of silk and gold.

A fierce blast came howling off the fen, screeched through the minster towers, swept along the dark aisles; and then, so say the chroniclers, caught up the pall from off the tomb, and hurled it far away into a corner.

“A miracle!” cried all the monks at once; and honestly enough, like true Englishmen as they were.

“The Holy heart refuses the gift, Countess,” said old Ulfketyl in a voice of awe.

Judith covered her face with her hands, and turned away trembling, and walked out, while all looked upon her as a thing accursed.

Of her subsequent life, her folly, her wantonness, her disgrace, her poverty, her wanderings, her wretched death, let others tell.

But these Normans believed that the curse of Heaven was upon her from that day. And the best of them believed likewise that Waltheof’s murder was the reason that William, her uncle, prospered no more in life.

“Ah, saucy sir,” said Alftruda to Ulfketyl, as she went out, “there is one waiting at Peterborough now who will teach thee manners,—Ingulf of Fontenelle, Abbot, in thy room.”