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

she clung to Ivo’s bridle.

He struck her down, and rode on over her.

A man cutting sedges in a punt in the lode alongside looked up at the girl’s shrieks, and leapt on shore, scythe in hand.

“Father! father!” cried she.

“I’ll rid thee, lass, or die for it,” said he, as he sprang up the drove-dike and swept right and left at the horses’ legs.

The men recoiled. One horse went down, lamed for life; another staggered backwards into the further lode, and was drowned. But an arrow went through the brave serf’s heart, and Ivo rode on, cursing more bitterly than ever, and comforted himself by flying his hawks at a covey of patridges.

Soon a group came along the drove which promised fresh sport to the man-hunters: but as the foremost person came up, Ivo stopped in wonder at the shout of,—

“Ivo! Ivo Taillebois! Halt and have a care! The English are risen, and we are all dead men!”

The words were spoken in French; and in French Ivo answered, laughing,—

“Thou art not a dead man yet it seems, Sir Robert; art going on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, that thou comest in this fashion? Or dost mean to return to Anjou as bare as thou camest out of it?”

For Sir Robert had, like Edgar in Shakespear’s Lear, “reserved himself a blanket, else had we all been shamed.”

But very little more did either he, his lady, and his three children wear, as they trudged along the drove, in even poorer case than that

Robert of Coningsby, Who came out of Normandy, With his wife Tiffany, And his maid Maupas, And his dog Hardigras.

“For the love of heaven and all chivalry, joke me no jokes, Sir Ivo, but give me and mine clothes and food! The barbarians rose on us last night,—with Azer, the ruffian who owned my lands, at their head, and drove us out into the night as we are, bidding us carry the news to you, for your turn would come next. There are forty or more of them in West Deeping now, and coming eastward, they say, to visit you, and, what is more than all, Hereward is come again.”

“Hereward?” cried Ivo, who knew that name well.

Whereon Sir Robert told him the terrible tragedy of Bourne.

“Mount the lady on a horse, and wrap her in my cloak. Get that dead villain’s clothes for Sir Robert as we go back. Put your horses’ heads about and ride for Spalding.”

“What shall we do with the lass?”

“We cannot be burdened with the jade. She has cost us two good horses already. Leave her in the road, bound as she is, and let us see if St. Guthlac her master will come and untie her.”

So they rode back. Coming from Deeping two hours after, Azer and his men found the girl on the road, dead.

“Another count in the long score,” quoth Azer. But when, in two hours more, they came to Spalding town, they found all the folk upon the street, shouting and praising the host of Heaven. There was not a Frenchman left in the town.

For when Ivo returned home, ere yet Sir Robert and his family were well clothed and fed, there galloped into Spalding from, the north Sir Ascelin, nephew and man of Thorold, would-be Abbot of Peterborough, and one of the garrison of Lincoln, which was then held by Hereward’s old friend, Gilbert of Ghent.

“Not bad news, I hope,” cried Ivo, as Ascelin clanked into the hall. “We have enough of our own. Here is all Kesteven, as the barbarians call it, risen, and they are murdering us right and left.”

“Worse news than that, Ivo Taillebois,” (“Sir,” or “Sieur,” Ascelin was loath to call him, being himself a man of family and fashion; and holding the nouveaux venus in deep contempt,)—“worse news than that: the North has risen again, and proclaimed Prince Edgar King.”

“A king of words! What care I, or you, as long as the Mamzer, God bless him! is a king of deeds?”

“They have done their deeds, though, too. Gospatrick and Marlesweyn are back out of Scotland. They attacked Robert de Comines [Footnote: Ancestor of the Comyns of Scotland.] at Durham, and burnt him in his own house. There was but one of his men got out of Durham to tell the news. And now they have marched on York; and all the chiefs, they say, have joined them,—Archill the Thane, and Edwin and Morcar, and Waltheof too, the young traitors.”

“Blessed Virgin!” cried Ivo, “thou art indeed gracious to thy most unworthy knight!”

“What do you mean?”

“You will see some day. Now, I will tell you but one word. When fools make hay, wise men can build ricks. This rebellion,—if it had not come of itself, I would have roused it. We wanted it, to cure William of this just and benevolent policy of his, which would have ended in sending us back to France as poor as we left it. Now, what am I expected to do? What says Gilbert of Ghent, the wise man of Lic—nic—what the pest do you call that outlandish place, which no civilized lips can pronounce?”

“Lic-nic-cole?” replied Ascelin, who, like the rest of the French, never could manage to say Lincoln. “He says, ‘March to me, and with me to join the king at York.’”

“Then he says well. These fat acres will be none the leaner, if I leave the English slaves to crop them for six months. Men! arm and horse Sir Robert of Deeping. Then arm and horse yourselves. We march north in half an hour, bag and baggage, scrip and scrippage. You are all bachelors, like me, and travel light. So off with you!—Sir Ascelin, you will eat and drink?”

“That will I.”

“Quick, then, butler! and after that pack up the Englishman’s plate-chest, which we inherited by right of fist,—the only plate and the only title-deeds I ever possessed.”

“Now, Sir Ascelin,”—as the three knights, the lady, and the poor children ate their fastest,—“listen to me. The art of war lies in this one nutshell,—to put the greatest number of men into one place at one time, and let all other places shift. To strike swiftly, and strike heavily. That is the rule of our liege lord, King William; and by it he will conquer England, or the world, if he will; and while he does that, he shall never say that Ivo Taillebois stayed at home to guard his own manors while he could join his king, and win all the manors of England once and for all.”

“Pardieu! whatever men may say of thy lineage or thy virtues, they cannot deny this,—that thou art a most wise and valiant captain.”

“That am I,” quoth Taillebois, too much pleased with the praise to care about being tutoyé by younger men. “As for my lineage, my lord the king has a fellow-feeling for upstarts; and the woodman’s grandson may