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

aping, as was his fancy, the Norse rovers’ slang. “Will you come with me to Holland?”

“You must ask my young lord there,” and he pointed to Arnulf. “I am his man now, by all laws of honor.”

A flush of jealousy passed over Robert’s face. He, haplessly for himself, thought that he had a grievance.

The rights of primogeniture—droits d’ainesse—were not respected in the family of the Baldwins as they should have been, had prudence and common sense had their way.

No sacred or divine right is conferred by the fact of a man’s being the first-born son. If Scripture be Scripture, the “Lord’s anointed” was usually rather a younger son of talent and virtue; one born, not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit, like David and Solomon. And so it was in other realms besides Flanders during the middle age. The father handed on the work—for ruling was hard work in those days—to the son most able to do it. Therefore we can believe Lambert of Aschaffenbourg when he says, that in Count Baldwin’s family for many ages he who pleased his father most took his father’s name, and was hereditary prince of all Flanders; while the other brothers led an inglorious life of vassalage to him.

But we can conceive, likewise, that such a method would give rise to intrigues, envyings, calumnies, murders, fratracidal civil wars, and all the train of miseries which for some years after this history made infamous the house of Baldwin, as they did many another noble house, till they were stopped by the gradual adoption of the rational rule of primogeniture.

So Robert, who might have been a daring and useful friend to his brother, had he been forced to take for granted from birth that he was nobody, and his brother everybody,—as do all younger sons of English noblemen, to their infinite benefit,—held himself to be an injured man for life, because his father called his first-born Baldwin, and promised him the succession,—which indeed he had worthily deserved, according to the laws of Mammon and this world, by bringing into the family such an heiress as Richilda and such a dowry as Mons.

But Robert, who thought himself as good as his brother,—though he was not such, save in valor,—nursed black envy in his heart. Hard it was to him to hear his elder brother called Baldwin of Mons, when he himself had not a foot of land of his own. Harder still to hear him called Baldwin the Good, when he felt in himself no title whatsoever to that epithet. Hardest of all to see a beautiful boy grow up, as heir both of Flanders and of Hainault.

Had he foreseen whither that envy would have led him; had he foreseen the hideous and fratracidal day of February 22d, 1071, and that fair boy’s golden locks rolling in dust and blood,—the wild Viking would have crushed the growing snake within his bosom; for he was a knight and a gentleman. But it was hidden from his eyes. He had to “dree his weird,”—to commit great sins, do great deeds, and die in his bed, mighty and honored, having children to his heart’s desire, and leaving the rest of his substance to his babes. Heaven help him, and the like of him!

But he turned to young Arnulf.

“Give me your man, boy!”

Arnulf pouted. He wanted to keep his Viking for himself, and said so.

“He is to teach me to go ‘leding,’ as the Norsemen call it, like you.”

Robert laughed. A hint at his piratical attempts pleased his vanity, all the more because they had been signal failures.

“Lend him me, then, my pretty nephew, for a month or two, till he has conquered these Friesland frogs for me; and then, if thou wilt go leding with him—”

“I hope you may never come back,” thought Robert to himself; but he did not say it,

“Let the knight go,” quoth Baldwin.

“Let me go with him, then.”

“No, by all saints! I cannot have thee poked through with a Friesland pike, or rotted with a Friesland ague.”

Arnulf pouted still.

“Abbot, what hast thou been at with the boy? He thinks of naught but blood and wounds, instead of books and prayers.”

“He is gone mad after this—this knight.”

“The Abbot,” said Hereward, “knows by hearing of his ears that I bid him bide at home, and try to govern lands in peace like his father and you, Sir Marquis.”

“Eh?”

The Abbot told honestly what had passed between Hereward and the lad, as they rode to St. Bertin.

Baldwin was silent, thinking, and smiling jollily, as was the wont of the Debonair.

“You are a man of sense, beausire. Come with me,” said he at last.

And he, Hereward, and Robert went into an inner room.

“Sit down on the settle by me.”

“It is too great an honor.”

“Nonsense, man! If I be who I am, I know enough of men to know that I need not be ashamed of having you as bench-fellow. Sit down.”

Hereward obeyed of course.

“Tell me who you are.”

Hereward looked out of the corner of his eyes, smiling and perplexed.

“Tell me and Robert who you are, man; and be done with it. I believe I know already. I have asked far and wide of chapmen, and merchants, and wandering knights, and pirate rascals,—like yourself.”

“And you found that I was a pirate rascal?”

“I found a pirate rascal who met you in Ireland, three years since, and will swear that if you have one gray eye and one blue—”

“As he has,” quoth Robert.

“That I am a wolf’s head, and a robber of priests, and an Esau on the face of the earth; every man’s hand against me, and mine—for I never take but what I give—against every man.”

“That you are the son of my old friend Leofric of Chester: and the hottest-hearted, shrewdest-headed, hardest-handed Berserker in the North Seas. You killed Gilbert of Ghent’s bear, Siward Digre’s cousin. Don’t deny it.”

“Don’t hang me, or send me to the Westminster miracle-worker to be hanged, and I will confess.”

“I? Every man is welcome who comes hither with a bold hand and a strong heart. ‘The Refuge for the Destitute,’ they call Flanders; I suppose because I am too good-natured to turn rogues out. So do no harm to mine, and mine shall do no harm to you.”

Baldwin’s words were true. He found house-room for everybody, helped everybody against everybody else (as will be seen), and yet quarrelled with