Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. Hereward, the Last of the English by Charles Kingsley (i am reading a book .TXT) 📖
- Author: Charles Kingsley
Book online «Hereward, the Last of the English by Charles Kingsley (i am reading a book .TXT) 📖». Author Charles Kingsley
“But what of Sweyn’s gallant holders and housecarles, who are to help to do this mighty deed?”
“Senlac left gaps enough among the noblemen of the South, which they can fill up, in the place of the French scum who now riot over Wessex. And if that should not suffice, what higher honor for me, or for my daughter the Queen-Dowager, than to devote our lands to the heroes who have won them back for us?”
Hereward hoped inwardly that Gyda would be as good as her word; for her greedy grasp had gathered to itself, before the Battle of Hastings, no less than six-and-thirty thousand acres of good English soil.
“I have always heard,” said he, bowing, “that if the Lady Gyda had been born a man, England would have had another all-seeing and all-daring statesman, and Earl Godwin a rival, instead of a helpmate. Now I believe what I have heard.”
But Torfrida looked sadly at the Countess. There was something pitiable in the sight of a woman ruined, bereaved, seemingly hopeless, portioning out the very land from which she was a fugitive; unable to restrain the passion for intrigue, which had been the toil and the bane of her sad and splendid life.
“And now,” she went on, “surely some kind saint brought me, even on my first landing, to you of all living men.”
“Doubtless the blessed St. Bertin, beneath whose shadow we repose here in peace,” said Hereward, somewhat dryly.
“I will go barefoot to his altar to-morrow, and offer my last jewel,” said Gunhilda.
“You,” said Gyda, without noticing her daughter, “are, above all men, the man who is needed.” And she began praising Hereward’s valor, his fame, his eloquence, his skill as a general and engineer; and when he suggested, smiling, that he was an exile and an outlaw, she insisted that he was all the fitter from that very fact. He had no enemies among the nobles. He had been mixed up in none of the civil wars and blood feuds of the last fifteen years. He was known only as that which he was, the ablest captain of his day,—the only man who could cope with William, the only man whom all parties in England would alike obey.
And so, with flattery as well as with truth, she persuaded, if not Hereward, at least Torfrida, that he was the man destined to free England once more; and that an earldom—anything which he chose to ask—would be the sure reward of his assistance.
“Torfrida,” said Hereward that night, “kiss me well; for you will not kiss me again for a while.”
“What?”
“I am going to England to-morrow.”
“Alone?”
“Alone. I and Martin to spy out the land; and a dozen or so of housecarles to take care of the ship in harbor.”
“But you have promised to fight the Viscount of Pinkney.”
“I will be back again in time for him. Not a word,—I must go to England, or go mad.”
“But Countess Gyda? Who will squire her to Bruges?”
“You, and the rest of my men. You must tell her all. She has a woman’s heart, and will understand. And tell Baldwin I shall be back within the month, if I am alive on land or water.”
“Hereward, Hereward, the French will kill you!”
“Not while I have your armor on. Peace, little fool! Are you actually afraid for Hereward at last?”
“O heavens! when am I not afraid for you!” and she cried herself to sleep upon his bosom. But she knew that it was the right, and knightly, and Christian thing to do.
Two days after, a long ship ran out of Calais, and sailed away north and east.
CHAPTER XIX. — HOW HEREWARD CLEARED BOURNE OF FRENCHMEN.
It may have been well, a week after, that Hereward rode from the direction of Boston, with Martin running at his heels.
As Hereward rode along the summer wold the summer sun sank low, till just before it went down he came to an island of small enclosed fields, high banks, elm-trees, and a farm inside; one of those most ancient holdings of the South and East Counts, still to be distinguished, by their huge banks and dikes full of hedgerow timber, from the more modern corn-lands outside, which were in Hereward’s time mostly common pasture-lands.
“This should be Azerdun,” said he; “and there inside, as I live, stands Azer getting in his crops. But who has he with him?”
With the old man were some half-dozen men of his own rank; some helping the serfs with might and main; one or two standing on the top of the banks, as if on the lookout; but all armed cap-Ă -pie.
“His friends are helping him to get them in,” quoth Martin, “for fear of the rascally Normans. A pleasant and peaceable country we have come back to.”
“And a very strong fortress are they holding,” said Hereward, “against either Norman horsemen or Norman arrows. How to dislodge those six fellows without six times their number, I do not see. It is well to recollect that.”
And so he did; and turned to use again and again, in after years, the strategetic capabilities of an old-fashioned English farm.
Hereward spurred his horse up to the nearest gate, and was instantly confronted by a little fair-haired man, as broad as he was tall, who heaved up a long “twybill,” or double axe, and bade him, across the gate, go to a certain place.
“Little Winter, little Winter, my chuck, my darling, my mad fellow, my brother-in-arms, my brother in robbery and murder, are you grown so honest in your old age that you will not know Hereward the wolf’s-head?”
“Hereward!” shrieked the doughty little man. “I took you for an accursed Norman in those outlandish clothes;” and lifting up no little voice, he shouted,—
“Hereward is back, and Martin Lightfoot at his heels!”
The gate was thrown open, and Hereward all but pulled off his horse. He was clapped on the back, turned round and round, admired from head to foot, shouted at by old companions of his boyhood, naughty young housecarles of his old troop, now settled down into honest thriving yeomen, hard working and hard fighting, who had heard again and again, with pride, of his doughty doings over sea. There was Winter, and Gwenoch, and Gery, Hereward’s cousin,—ancestor, it may be, of the ancient
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