Hereward, the Last of the English by Charles Kingsley (i am reading a book .TXT) 📖

Hereward ate and drank: while his hosts eyed him, not without some lingering suspicion, but still with admiration and some respect. His splendid armor and weapons, as well as the golden locks which fell far below his shoulders, and conveniently hid a face which he did not wish yet to have recognized, showed him to be a man of the highest rank; while the palm of his small hand, as hard and bony as any woodman’s, proclaimed him to be no novice of a fighting man. The strong Flemish accent which both he and Martin Lightfoot had assumed prevented the honest Englishmen from piercing his disguise. They watched him, while he in turn watched them, struck by their uneasy looks and sullen silence.

“We are a dull company,” said he after a while, courteously enough. “We used to be told in Flanders that there were none such stout drinkers and none such jolly singers as you gallant men of the Danelagh here.”

“Dull times make dull company,” said one, “and no offence to you, Sir Knight.”

“Are you such a stranger,” asked Perry, “that you do not know what has happened in this town during the last three days?”

“No good, I will warrant, if you have Frenchmen in it.”

“Why was not Hereward here?” wailed the old man in the corner. “It never would have happened if he had been in the town.”

“What?” asked Hereward, trying to command himself.

“What has happened,” said Perry, “makes a free Englishman’s blood boil to tell of. Here, Sir Knight, three days ago, comes in this Frenchman with some twenty ruffians of his own, and more of one Taillebois’s, too, to see him safe; says that this new king, this base-born Frenchman, has given away all Earl Morcar’s lands, and that Bourne is his; kills a man or two; upsets the women; gets drunk, ruffles, and roisters; breaks into my lady’s bower, calling her to give up her keys, and when she gives them, will have all her jewels too. She faces them like a brave Princess, and two of the hounds lay hold of her, and say that she shall ride through Bourne as she rode through Coventry. The boy Godwin—he that was the great Earl’s godson, our last hope, the last of our house—draws sword on them; and he, a boy of sixteen summers, kills them both out of hand. The rest set on him, cut his head off, and there it sticks on the gable spike of the hall to this hour. And do you ask, after that, why free Englishmen are dull company?”

“And our turn will come next,” growled somebody. “The turn will go all round; no man’s life or land, wife or daughters, will be safe soon for these accursed Frenchmen, unless, as the old man says, Hereward comes back.”

Once again the old man wailed out of the chimney-corner: “Why did they ever send Hereward away? I warned the good Earl, I warned my good lady, many a time, to let him sow his wild oats and be done with them; or they might need him some day when they could not find him! He was a lad! He was a lad!” and again he whined, and sank into silence.

Hereward heard all this dry-eyed, hardening his heart into a great resolve. “This is a dark story,” said he calmly, “and it would behoove me as a gentleman to succor this distressed lady, did I but know how. Tell me what I can do now, and I will do it.”

“Your health!” cried one. “You speak like a true knight.”

“And he looks the man to keep his word, I’ll warrant him,” spoke another.

“He does,” said Perry, shaking his head; “but if anything could have been done, sir, be sure we would have done it: but all our armed men are scattered up and down the country, each taking care, as is natural, of his own cattle and his own women. There are not ten men-at-arms in Bourne this night; and, what is worse, sir, as you know, who seem to have known war as well as me, there is no man to lead them.”

Here Hereward was on the point of saying, “And what if I led you?”—On the point too of discovering himself: but he stopped short.

Was it fair to involve this little knot of gallant fellows in what might be a hopeless struggle, and have all Bourne burned over their heads ere morning by the ruffian Frenchmen? No; his mother’s quarrel was his own private quarrel. He would go alone and see the strength of the enemy; and after that, may be, he would raise the country on them: or—and half a dozen plans suggested themselves to his crafty brain as he sat brooding and scheming: then, as always, utterly self-confident.

He was startled by a burst of noise outside,—music, laughter, and shouts.

“There,” said Perry, bitterly, “are those Frenchmen, dancing and singing in the hall with my Lord Godwin’s head above them!” And curses bitter and deep went round the room. They sat sullen and silent it may be for an hour or more; only moving when, at some fresh outbreak of revelry, the old man started from his doze and asked if that was Hereward coming.

“And who is this Hereward of whom you speak?” said Hereward at last.

“We thought you might know him, Sir Knight, if you come from Flanders, as you say you do,” said three or four voices in a surprised and surly tone.

“Certainly I know such a man, if he be Hereward the wolf’s-head, Hereward the outlaw, as they call him. And a good soldier he is, though he be not yet made a knight; and married, too, to a rich and fair lady. I served under this Hereward a few months ago in the Friesland War, and know no man whom I would sooner follow.”

“Nor I neither,” chimed in Martin Lightfoot from the other end of the table.

“Nor we,” cried all the men-at-arms at once, each vying with the other in extravagant stories of their hero’s prowess, and in asking the knight of Flanders whether they were true or not.

To avoid offending them, Hereward was forced to confess to a great many deeds which he had never done: but he was right glad to find that his fame had reached his native place, and that he could count on the men if he needed them.

“But who is this Hereward,” said he, “that he should have to do with your town here?”

Half a dozen voices at once told him his own story.

“I always heard,” said he, dryly, “that that gentleman was of some very noble kin; and I will surely tell him all that has befallen here as soon as I return to Flanders.”

At last they grew sleepy, and the men went out and brought in bundles of sweet rush, and spread them against the wall, and prepared to lie down, each his weapon by his side. And when they were lain down, Hereward beckoned to him Perry and Martin Lightfoot, and went out into the back yard, under the pretence of seeing to his horse.

“Perry Surturbrandsson,” said he, “you seem to be an honest man, as we in foreign parts hold all the Danelagh to be. Now it is fixed in my mind to go up, and my