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

So Hereward fought the Viscount of Pinkney, who had the usual luck which befell those who crossed swords with him, and plotted meanwhile with Gyda and the Countess Judith. Abbot Egelsin sent them news from King Sweyn in Denmark; soon Judith and Tosti’s two sons went themselves to Sweyn, and helped the plot and the fitting out of the armament. News they had from England in plenty, by messengers from Queen Matilda to the sister who was intriguing to dethrone her husband, and by private messengers from Durham and from York.

Baldwin, the débonnaire marquis, had not lived to see this fruit of his long efforts to please everybody. He had gone to his rest the year before; and now there ruled in Bruges his son, Baldwin the Good, “Count Palatine,” as he styled himself, and his wife Richilda, the Lady of Hainault.

They probably cared as little for the success of their sister Matilda as they did for that of their sister Judith; and followed out—Baldwin at least—the great marquis’s plan of making Flanders a retreat for the fugitives of all the countries round.

At least, if (as seems) Sweyn’s fleet made the coast of Flanders its rendezvous and base of operations against King William, Baldwin offered no resistance.

So the messengers came, and the plots went on. Great was the delight of Hereward and the ladies when they heard of the taking of Durham and York; but bitter their surprise and rage when they heard that Gospatrick and the Confederates had proclaimed Edgar Atheling king.

“Fools! they will ruin all!” cried Gyda. “Do they expect Swend Ulfsson, who never moved a finger yet, unless he saw that it would pay him within the hour, to spend blood and treasure in putting that puppet boy upon the throne instead of himself?”

“Calm yourself, great Countess,” said Hereward, with a smile. “The man who puts him on the throne will find it very easy to take him off again when he needs.”

“Pish!” said Gyda. “He must put him on the throne first. And how will he do that? Will the men of the Danelagh, much less the Northumbrians, ever rally round an Atheling of Cerdic’s house? They are raising a Wessex army in Northumbria; a southern army in the north. There is no real loyalty there toward the Atheling, not even the tie of kin, as there would be to Swend. The boy is a mere stalking-horse, behind which each of these greedy chiefs expects to get back his own lands; and if they can get them back by any other means, well and good. Mark my words, Sir Hereward, that cunning Frenchman will treat with them one by one, and betray them one by one, till there is none left.”

How far Gyda was right will be seen hereafter. But a less practised diplomat than the great Countess might have speculated reasonably on such an event.

At least, let this be said, that when historians have complained of the treachery of King Swend Ulfsson and his Danes, they have forgotten certain broad and simple facts.

Swend sailed for England to take a kingdom which he believed to be his by right; which he had formerly demanded of William. When he arrived there, he found himself a mere cat’s-paw for recovering that kingdom for an incapable boy, whom he believed to have no right to the throne at all.

Then came darker news. As Ivo had foreseen, and as Ivo had done his best to bring about, William dashed on York, and drove out the Confederates with terrible slaughter; profaned the churches, plundered the town. Gospatrick and the earls retreated to Durham; the Atheling, more cautious, to Scotland.

Then came a strange story, worthy of the grown children who, in those old times, bore the hearts of boys with the ferocity and intellect of men.

A great fog fell on the Frenchmen as they struggled over the Durham moors. The doomed city was close beneath them; they heard Wear roaring in his wooded gorge. But a darkness, as of Egypt, lay upon them: “neither rose any from his place.”

Then the Frenchmen cried: “This darkness is from St. Cuthbert himself. We have invaded his holy soil. Who has not heard how none who offend St. Cuthbert ever went unpunished? how palsy, blindness, madness, fall on those who dare to violate his sanctuary?”

And the French turned and fled from before the face of St. Cuthbert; and William went down to Winchester angry and sad, and then went off to Gloucestershire; and hunted—for, whatever befell, he still would hunt—in the forest of Dean.

And still Swend and his Danes had not sailed; and Hereward walked to and fro in his house, impatiently, and bided his time.

In July, Baldwin died. Arnoul, the boy, was Count of Flanders, and Richilda, his sorceress-mother, ruled the land in his name. She began to oppress the Flemings; not those of French Flanders, round St. Omer, but those of Flemish Flanders, toward the north. They threatened to send for Robert the Frison to right them.

Hereward was perplexed. He was Robert the Frison’s friend, and old soldier. Richilda was Torfrida’s friend; so was, still more, the boy Arnoul; which party should he take? Neither, if he could help it. And he longed to be safe out of the land.

And at last his time came. Martin Lightfoot ran in, breathless, to tell how the sails of a mighty fleet were visible from the Dunes.

“Here?” cried Hereward. “What are the fools doing down here, wandering into the very jaws of the wolf? How will they land here? They were to have gone straight to the Lincolnshire coast. God grant this mistake be not the first of dozens!”

Hereward went into Torfrida’s bower.

“This is an evil business. The Danes are here, where they have no business, instead of being off Scheldtmouth, as I entreated them. But go we must, or be forever shamed. Now, true wife, are you ready? Dare you leave home and kin and friends, once and for all, to go, you know not whither, with one who may be a gory corpse by this day week?”

“I dare,” said she.

So they went down to Calais by night, with Torfrida’s mother, and all their jewels, and all they had in the world. And their housecarles went with them, forty men, tried and trained, who had vowed to follow Hereward