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
“Heaven grant he may rue it! Would that her bosom were knives and fish-hooks, like that of the statue in the fairy-tale. See what he has done for us! He is Earl not only of his own lands, but he has taken poor Morcar’s too, and half his earldom. He is Earl of Huntingdon, of Cambridge, they say,—of this ground on which we stand. What right have I here now? How can I call on a single man to arm, as I could in Morcar’s name? I am an outlaw here and a robber; and so is every man with me. And do you think that William did not know that? He saw well enough what he was doing when he set up that great brainless idol as Earl again. He wanted to split up the Danish folk, and he has done it. The Northumbrians will stick to Waltheof. They think him a mighty hero, because he held York-gate alone with his own axe against all the French.”
“Well, that was a gallant deed.”
“Pish! we are all gallant men, we English. It is not courage that we want, it is brains. So the Yorkshire and Lindsay men, and the Nottingham men too, will go with Waltheof. And round here, and all through the fens, every coward, every prudent man even,—every man who likes to be within the law, and feel his head safe on his shoulders,—no blame to him—will draw each from me for fear of this new Earl, and leave us to end as a handful of outlaws. I see it all. As William sees it all. He is wise enough, the Mamzer, and so is his father Belial, to whom he will go 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, by defying 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 go pray, for I never needed it more.”
Hereward watched her kneeling, as he sat moody, all but desperate. Then he glided to her side, and said gently,—
“Teach me how to pray, Torfrida. I can say a Pater or an Ave. But that does not comfort a man’s heart, as far as I could ever find. Teach me to pray, 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.
CHAPTER XXVI. — HOW HEREWARD FULFILLED HIS WORDS TO THE PRIOR OF THE GOLDEN BOROUGH.
In the course of that winter died good Abbot Brand. Hereward went over to see him, and found him mumbling to himself texts of Isaiah, and confessing the sins of his people.
“‘Woe to the vineyard that bringeth forth wild grapes. Woe to those that join house to house, and field to field,’—like us, and the Godwinssons, and every man that could, till we ‘stood alone in the land.’ ‘Many houses, great and fair, shall be without inhabitants.’ It is all foretold in Holy Writ, Hereward, my son. ‘Woe to those who rise early to fill themselves with strong drink, and the tabret and harp are in their feasts; but they regard not the works of the Lord.’ ‘Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge.’ Ah, those Frenchmen have knowledge, and too much of it; while we have brains filled with ale instead of justice. ‘Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure’; and all go down into it, one by one. And dost thou think thou shalt escape, Hereward, thou stout-hearted?”
“I neither know nor care; but this I know, that whithersoever I go, I shall go sword in hand.”
“‘They that take the sword shall perish by the sword,’” said Brand, and blessed Hereward, and died.
A week after came news that Thorold of Malmesbury was coming to take the Abbey of Peterborough, and had got as far as Stamford, with a right royal train.
Then Hereward sent Abbot Thorold word, that if he or his Frenchmen put foot into Peterborough, he, Hereward, would burn it over their heads. And that if he rode a mile beyond Stamford town, he should walk back into it barefoot in his shirt.
Whereon Thorold abode at Stamford, and kept up his spirits by singing the songs of Roland,—which some say he himself composed.
A week after that, and the Danes were come.
A mighty fleet, with Sweyn Ulfsson at their head, went up the Ouse toward Ely. Another, with Osbiorn at their head, having joined them off the mouth of the Humber, sailed (it seems) up the Nene. All the chivalry of Denmark and Ireland was come. And with it, all the chivalry and the unchivalry of the Baltic shores. Vikings from Jomsburg and Arkona, Gottlanders from Wisby; and with them savages from Esthonia, Finns from Äland, Letts who still offered in the forests of Rugen, human victims to the four-headed Swantowit; foul hordes in sheep-skins and primeval filth, who might have been scented from Hunstanton Cliff ever since their ships had rounded the Skaw.
Hereward hurried to them with all his men. He was anxious, of course, to prevent their plundering the landsfolk as they went,—and that the savages from the Baltic shore would certainly do, if they could, however reasonable the Danes, Orkneymen, and Irish Ostmen might be.
Food, of course, they must take where they could find it; but outrages were not a necessary, though a too common, adjunct to the process of emptying a farmer’s granaries.
He found the Danes in a dangerous mood, sulky, and disgusted, as they had good right to be. They had gone to the Humber, and found nothing but ruin; the land waste; the French holding both the shores of the Humber; and Osbiorn cowering in Humber-mouth, hardly able to feed his men. They had come to conquer England, and nothing was left for them to conquer, but a few peat-bogs. Then they would have what there was in them. Every one knew that gold grew up in England out of the ground, wherever a monk put his foot. And they would plunder Crowland. Their forefathers had done it, and had fared none the worse. English gold they would have, if they could not get fat English manors.
“No! not Crowland!” said Hereward; “any place but Crowland, endowed and honored by Canute the Great,—Crowland, whose abbot was a Danish nobleman, whose monks were Danes to a man, of their own flesh and blood. Canute’s soul would rise up in Valhalla and curse them, if they took the value of a penny from St. Guthlac. St. Guthlac was their good friend. He would send them bread, meat, ale, all they needed. But woe to the
Comments (0)