CHAPTER XXV.
HOW HEREWARD FOUND A WISER MAN IN ENGLAND THAN HIMSELF.
There have been certain men so great, that he who describes them inwords, much more pretends to analyze their inmost feelings, must be avery great man himself, or incur the accusation of presumption. Andsuch a great man was William of Normandy,--one of those unfathomablemaster-personages who must not be rashly dragged on any stage. Thegenius of a Bulwer, in attempting to draw him, took care, with a wisemodesty, not to draw him in too much detail,--to confess always thatthere was much beneath and behind in William's character which none,even of his contemporaries, could guess. And still more modest thanBulwer is this chronicler bound to be.
But one may fancy, for once in a way, what William's thoughts were, whenthey brought him the evil news of York. For we know what his acts were;and he acted up to his thoughts.
Hunting he was, they say, in the forest of Dean, when first he heardthat all England, north of the Watling Street, had broken loose, andthat he was king of only half the isle.
Did he--as when, hunting in the forest of Rouen, he got the news ofHarold's coronation--play with his bow, stringing and unstringing itnervously, till he had made up his mighty mind? Then did he go home tohis lodge, and there spread on the rough oak board a parchment map ofEngland, which no child would deign to learn from now, but was then goodenough to guide armies to victory, because the eyes of a great generallooked upon it?
As he pored over the map, by the light of bog-deal torch or rush candle,what would he see upon it?
Three separate blazes of insurrection, from northwest to east, along theWatling Street.
At Chester, Edric, "the wild Thane," who, according to Domesday-book,had lost vast lands in Shropshire; Algitha, Harold's widow, andBlethwallon and all his Welsh,--"the white mantles," swarming alongChester streets, not as usually, to tear and ravage like the wild-catsof their own rocks, but fast friends by blood of Algitha, once theirqueen on Penmaenmawr. [Footnote: See the admirable description of thetragedy of Penmaenmawr, in Bulwer's 'Harold.'] Edwin, the young Earl,Algitha's brother, Hereward's nephew,--he must be with them too, if hewere a man.
Eastward, round Stafford, and the centre of Mercia, another blaze offurious English valor. Morcar, Edwin's brother, must be there, as theirEarl, if he too was a man.
Then in the fens and Kesteven. What meant this news, that Hereward ofSt. Omer was come again, and an army with him? That he was levying waron all Frenchmen, in the name of Sweyn, King of Denmark and of England?He is an outlaw, a desperado, a boastful swash-buckler, thought William,it may be, to himself. He found out, in after years, that he hadmistaken his man.
And north, at York, in the rear of those three insurrections layGospatrick, Waltheof, and Marlesweyn, with the Northumbrian host. Durhamwas lost, and Comyn burnt therein. But York, so boasted William Malet,could hold out for a year. He should not need to hold out for so long.
And last, and worst of all, hung on the eastern coast the mighty fleetof Sweyn, who claimed England as his of right. The foe whom he had partfeared ever since he set foot on English soil, a collision with whom hadbeen inevitable all along, was come at last; but where would he strikehis blow?
William knew, it may be, that the Danes had been defeated at Norwich;he knew, doubt it not (for his spies told him everything), that theyhad purposed entering the Wash. To prevent a junction between them andHereward was impossible. He must prevent a junction between them andEdwin and Morcar's men.
He determined, it seems--for he did it--to cut the English line in two,and marched upon Stafford as its centre.
So it seems; for all records of these campaigns are fragmentary,confused, contradictory. The Normans fought, and had no time to writehistory. The English, beaten and crushed, died and left no sign. Theonly chroniclers of the time are monks. And little could OrdericusVitalis, or Florence of Worcester, or he of Peterborough, faithful as hewas, who filled up the sad pages of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,--littlecould they see or understand of the masterly strategy which wasconquering all England for Norman monks, in order that they, followingthe army like black ravens, might feast themselves upon the prey whichothers won for them. To them, the death of an abbot, the squabbles of amonastery, the journey of a prelate to Rome, are more important than themanoeuvres which decided the life and freedom of tens of thousands.
So all we know is, that William fell upon Morcar's men at Stafford,and smote them with a great destruction; rolling the fugitives west andeast, toward Edwin, perhaps, at Chester, certainly toward Hereward inthe fens.
At Stafford met him the fugitives from York, Malet, his wife, andchildren, with the dreadful news that the Danes had joined Gospatrick,and that York was lost.
William burst into fiendish fury. He accused the wretched men oftreason. He cut off their hands, thrust out their eyes, threw Malet intoprison, and stormed on north.
He lay at Pontefract for three weeks. The bridges over the Aire werebroken down. But at last he crossed and marched on York.
No man opposed him. The Danes were gone down to the Humber. Gospatrickand Waltheof's hearts had failed them, and they had retired before thegreat captain.
Florence, of Worcester, says that William bought Earl Osbiorn off,giving him much money, and leave to forage for his fleet along thecoast, and that Osbiorn was outlawed on his return to Denmark.
Doubtless William would have so done if he could. Doubtless the angryand disappointed English raised such accusations against the earl,believing them to be true. But is not the simpler cause of Osbiorn'sconduct to be found in this plain fact? He had sailed from Denmark toput Sweyn, his brother, on the throne. He found, on his arrival, thatGospatrick and Waltheof had seized it in the name of Edgar Atheling.What had he to do more in England, save what he did?--go out into theHumber, and winter safely there, waiting till Sweyn should come withreinforcements in the spring?
Then William had his revenge. He destroyed, in the language ofScripture, "the life of the land." Far and wide the farms were burntover their owners' heads, the growing crops upon the ground; the horseswere houghed, the cattle driven off; while of human death and miserythere was no end. Yorkshire, and much of the neighboring counties, laywaste, for the next nine years. It did not recover itself fully tillseveral generations after.
The Danes had boasted that they would keep their Yule at York. Williamkept his Yule there instead. He sent to Winchester for the regaliaof the Confessor; and in the midst of the blackened ruins, while theEnglish, for miles around, wandered starving in the snows, feeding oncarrion, on rats and mice, and, at last, upon each other's corpses, hesat in his royal robes, and gave away the lands of Edwin and Morcar tohis liegemen. And thus, like the Romans, from whom he derived both hisstrategy and his civilization, he "made a solitude and called it peace."
He did not give away Waltheof's lands; and only part of Gospatrick's. Hewanted Gospatrick; he loved Waltheof, and wanted him likewise.
Therefore, through the desert which he himself had made, he forced hisway up to the Tees a second time, over snow-covered moors; and thistime St. Cuthbert had sent no fog, being satisfied, presumably, withWilliam's orthodox attachment to St. Peter and Rome; so the Conquerortreated quietly with Waltheof and Gospatrick, who lay at Durham.
Gospatrick got back his ancestral earldom from Tees to Tyne; and paiddown for it much hard money and treasure; bought it, in fact, he said.
Waltheof got back his earldom, and much of Morcar's. From the fens tothe Tees was to be his province. And then, to the astonishment alike ofNormans and English, and it may be, of himself, he married Judith, theConqueror's niece; and became, once more, William's loved and trustedfriend--or slave.
It seems inexplicable at first sight. Inexplicable, save as an instanceof that fascination which the strong sometimes exercise over the weak.
Then William turned southwest. Edwin, wild Edric, the dispossessed Thaneof Shropshire, and the wilder Blethwallon and his Welshmen, were stillharrying and slaying. They had just attacked Shrewsbu
ry. William wouldcome upon them by a way they thought not of.
So over the backbone of England, by way, probably, of Halifax, orHuddersfield, through pathless moors and bogs, down towards the plainsof Lancashire and Cheshire, he pushed over and on. His soldiers from theplains of sunny France could not face the cold, the rain, the bogs, thehideous gorges, the valiant peasants,--still the finest and shrewdestrace of men in all England,--who set upon them in wooded glens, orrolled stones on them from the limestone crags. They prayed to bedismissed, to go home.
"Cowards might go back," said William; "he should go on. If he could notride, he would walk. Whoever lagged, he would be foremost." And, cheeredby his example, the army at last debouched upon the Cheshire flats.
Then he fell upon Edwin, as he had fallen upon Morcar. He drove the wildWelsh through the pass of Mold, and up into their native hills. Helaid all waste with fire and sword for many a mile, as Domesday-booktestifies to this day. He strengthened the walls of Chester, andtrampled out the last embers of rebellion; he went down south toSalisbury, King of England once again.
Why did he not push on at once against the one rebellion leftalight,--that of Hereward and his fenmen?
It may be that he understood him and them. It may be that he meant totreat with Sweyn, as he had done, if the story be true, with Osbiorn. Itis more likely that he could do no more; that his army, after so swiftand long a campaign, required rest. It may be that the time of serviceof many of his mercenaries was expired. Be that as it may, he musteredthem at Old Sarum,--the Roman British burgh which still stands on thedown side, and rewarded them, according to their deserts, from the landsof the conquered English.
How soon Hereward knew all this, or how he passed the winter of1070-71, we cannot tell. But to him it must have been a winter of bitterperplexity.
It was impossible to get information from Edwin; and news from York wasalmost as impossible to get, for Gilbert of Ghent stood between him andit.
He felt himself now pent in, all but trapped. Since he had set footlast in England ugly things had risen up, on which he had calculatedtoo little,--namely, Norman castles. A whole ring of them in Norfolkand Suffolk cut him off from the south. A castle at Cambridge closedthe south end of the fens; another at Bedford, the western end; whileLincoln Castle to the north, cut him off from York.
His men did not see the difficulty; and wanted him to march towardsYork, and clear all Lindsay and right up to the Humber.
Gladly would he have done so, when he heard that the Danes werewintering in the Humber.
"But how can we take Lincoln Castle without artillery, or even abattering-ram?"
"Let us march past, it then, and leave it behind."
"Ah, my sons," said Hereward, laughing sadly, "do you suppose that theMamzer spends his time--and Englishmen's life and labor--in heaping upthose great stone mountains, that you and I may walk past them? They areput there just to prevent our walking past, unless we choose to have thegarrison sallying out to attack our rear, and cut us off from home, andcarry off our women into the bargain, when our backs are turned."
The English swore, and declared that they had never thought of that.
"No. We drink too much ale this side of the Channel, to think ofthat,--or of anything beside."
"But," said Leofwin Prat, "if we have no artillery, we can make some."
"Spoken like yourself, good comrade. If we only knew how."
"I know," said Torfrida. "I have read of such things in books of theancients, and I have watched them making continually,--I little knewwhy, or that I should ever turn engineer."
"What is there that you do not know?" cried they all at once. AndTorfrida actually showed herself a fair practical engineer.
But where was iron to come from? Iron for catapult springs, iron for ramheads, iron for bolts and bars?
"Torfrida," said Hereward, "you are wise. Can you use the divining-rod?
"Why, my knight?"
"Because there might be iron ore in the wolds; and if you could find itby the rod, we might get it up and smelt it."
Torfrida said humbly that she would try; and walked with thedivining-rod between her pretty fingers for many a mile in wood andwold, wherever the ground looked red and rusty. But she never found anyiron.
"We must take the tires off the cart-wheels," said Leofwin Prat.
"But how will the carts do without? For we shall want them if we march."
"In Provence, where I was born, the wheels of the carts are made out ofone round piece of wood. Could we not cut out wheels like them?" askedTorfrida.
"You are the wise woman, as usual," said Hereward.
Torfrida burst into a violent flood of tears, no one knew why.
There came over her a vision of the creaking carts, and the little sleekoxen, dove-colored and dove-eyed, with their canvas mantles tied neatlyon to keep off heat and flies, lounging on with their light load of vineand olive twigs beneath the blazing southern sun. When should she seethe sun once more? She looked up at the brown branches overhead, howlingin the December gale, and down at the brown fen below, dying into mistand darkness as the low December sun died down; and it seemed as if herlife was dying down with it. There would be no more sun, and no moresummers, for her upon this earth.
None certainly for her poor old mother. Her southern blood was chillingmore and more beneath the bitter sky of Kesteven. The fall of the leafhad brought with it rheumatism, ague, an many miseries. Cunning oldleech-wives treated the French lady with tonics, mugwort, and bogbean,and good wine enow, But, like David of old, she got no heat; and beforeYule-tide came, she had prayed herself safely out of this world, andinto the world to come. And Torfrida's heart was the more light when shesaw her go.
She was absorbed utterly in Hereward and his plots. She lived fornothing else; and clung to them all the more fiercely, the moredesperate they seemed.
So that small band of gallant men labored on, waiting for the Danes, andtrying to make artillery and take Lincoln Keep. And all the while--sounequal is fortune when God so wills--throughout the Southern Weald,from Hastings to Hind-head, every copse glared with charcoal-heaps,every glen was burrowed with iron diggings, every hammer-pond stampedand gurgled night and day, smelting and forging English iron, wherewiththe Frenchmen might slay Englishmen.
William--though perhaps he knew it not himself--had, in securingSussex and Surrey, secured the then great iron-field of England, andan unlimited supply of weapons; and to that circumstance, it may be, asmuch as to any other, the success of his campaigns may be due.
It must have been in one of these December days that a handful ofknights came through the Bruneswold, mud and blood bespattered, urgingon tired horses, as men desperate and foredone. And the foremost of themall, when he saw Hereward at the gate of Bourne, leaped down, and threwhis arms round his neck and burst into bitter weeping.
"Hereward, I know you, though you know me not. I am your nephew, MorcarAlgarsson; and all is lost."
As the winter ran on, other fugitives came in, mostly of rank andfamily. At last Edwin himself came, young and fair, like Morcar; hewho should have been the Conqueror's son-in-law; for whom his true-lovepined, as he pined, in vain. Where were Sweyn and his Danes? Whithershould they go till he came?
"To Ely," answered Hereward.
Whether or not it was his wit which first seized on the militarycapabilities of Ely is not told. Leofric the deacon, who is likely toknow best, says that there were men there already holding theirs outagainst William, and that they sent for Hereward. But it is not clearfrom his words whether they were fugitives, or merely bold AbbotThurstan and his monks.
It is but probable, nevertheless, that Hereward, as the only man amongthe fugitives who ever showed any ability whatsoever, and who was, also,the only leader (save Morcar) connected with the fen, conceived thefamous "Camp of Refuge," and made it a formidable fact. Be that as itmay, Edwin and Morcar went to Ely; and there joined them a Count Tosti(according to Leofric), unknown to history; a Siward Barn, or "the bo
y,"who had been dispossessed of lands in Lincolnshire; and other valiantand noble gentlemen,--the last wrecks of the English aristocracy. Andthere they sat in Abbot Thurstan's hall, and waited for Sweyn and theDanes.
But the worst Job's messenger who, during that evil winter and spring,came into the fen, was Bishop Egelwin of Durham. He it was, mostprobably, who brought the news of Yorkshire laid waste with fire andsword. He it was, most certainly, who brought the worse news still, thatGospatrick and Waltheof were gone over to the king. He was at Durham,seemingly, when he saw that; and fled for his life ere evil overtookhim: for to yield to William that brave bishop had no mind.
But when Hereward heard that Waltheof was married to the Conqueror'sniece, he smote his hands together, and cursed him, and the mother whobore him to Siward the Stout.
"Could thy father rise from his grave, he would split thy craven head inthe very lap of the Frenchwoman."
"A hard lap will he find it, Hereward," said Torfrida. "I knowher,--wanton, false, and vain. Heaven grant he do not rue the day heever saw her!"
"Heaven grant he may rue it! Would that her bosom were knives andfish-hooks, like that of the statue in the fairy-tale. See what he hasdone for us! He is Earl not only of his own lands, but he has takenpoor Morcar's too, and half his earldom. He is Earl of Huntingdon, ofCambridge, they say,--of this ground on which we stand. What righthave I here now? How can I call on a single man to arm, as I could inMorcar's name? I am an outlaw here and a robber; and so is every manwith me. And do you think that William did not know that? He saw wellenough what he was doing when he set up that great brainless idol asEarl again. He wanted to split up the Danish folk, and he has done it.The Northumbrians will stick to Waltheof. They think him a mightyhero, because he held York-gate alone with his own axe against all theFrench."
"Well, that was a gallant deed."
"Pish! we are all gallant men, we English. It is not courage that wewant, it is brains. So the Yorkshire and Lindsay men, and the Nottinghammen too, will go with Waltheof. And round here, and all through thefens, every coward, every prudent man even,--every man who likes to bewithin the law, and feel his head safe on his shoulders,--no blame tohim--will draw each from me for fear of this new Earl, and leave us toend as a handful of outlaws. I see it all. As William sees it all. He iswise enough, the Mamzer, and so is his father Belial, to whom he willgo home some day. Yes, Torfrida," he went on after a pause, more gently,but in a tone of exquisite sadness, "you were right, as you always are.I am no match for that man. I see it now."
"I never said that. Only--"
"Only you told me again and again that he was the wisest man on earth."
"And yet, for that very reason, I bade you win glory without end, bydefying the wisest man on earth."
"And do you bid me do it still?"
"God knows what I bid," said Torfrida, bursting into tears. "Let me gopray, for I never needed it more."
Hereward watched her kneeling, as he sat moody, all but desperate. Thenhe glided to her side, and said gently,--
"Teach me how to pray, Torfrida. I can say a Pater or an Ave. But thatdoes not comfort a man's heart, as far as I could ever find. Teach me topray, as you and my mother do."
And she put her arms round the wild man's neck, and tried to teach him,like a little child.