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
“To me, men-at-arms! A Dade! a Dade!” But no man answered.
“Yield!” quoth Hereward.
Sir Dade answered by a blow on Hereward’s helmet, which felled the chief to his knees, and broke the sword into twenty splinters.
“Well hit,” said Hereward, as he rose. “Don’t touch him, men! this is my quarrel now. Yield, sir! you have done enough for your honor. It is madness to throw away your life.”
The knight looked round on the fierce ring of faces, in the midst of which he stood alone.
“To none but Hereward.”
“Hereward am I.”
“Ah,” said the knight, “had I but hit a little harder!”
“You would have broke your sword into more splinters. My armor is enchanted. So yield like a reasonable and valiant man.”
“What care I?” said the knight, stepping on to the earthwork, and sitting down quietly. “I vowed to St. Mary and King William that into Ely I would get this day; and in Ely I am; so I have done my work.”
“And now you shall taste—as such a gallant knight deserves—the hospitality of Ely.”
It was Torfrida who spoke.
“My husband’s prisoners are mine; and I, when I find them such prudhommes as you are, have no lighter chains for them than that which a lady’s bower can afford.”
Sir Dade was going to make an equally courteous answer, when over and above the shouts and curses of the combatants rose a yell so keen, so dreadful, as made all hurry forward to the rampart.
That which Hereward had foreseen was come at last. The bridge, strained more and more by its living burden, and by the falling tide, had parted,—not at the Ely end, where the sliding of the sow took off the pressure,—but at the end nearest the camp. One sideway roll it gave, and then, turning over, engulfed in that foul stream the flower of Norman chivalry; leaving a line—a full quarter of a mile in length—of wretches drowning in the dark water, or, more hideous still, in the bottomless slime of peat and mud.
Thousands are said to have perished. Their armor and weapons were found at times, by delvers and dikers, for centuries after; are found at times unto this day, beneath the rich drained cornfields which now fill up that black half-mile, or in the bed of the narrow brook to which the Westwater, robbed of its streams by the Bedford Level, has dwindled down at last.
William, they say, struck his tents and departed forthwith, “groaning from deep grief of heart;” and so ended the first battle of Aldreth.
CHAPTER XXIX. — HOW SIR DADE BROUGHT NEWS FROM ELY.
A month after the fight, there came into the camp at Cambridge, riding on a good horse, himself fat and well-liking, none other than Sir Dade.
Boisterously he was received, as one alive from the dead; and questioned as to his adventures and sufferings.
“Adventures I have had, and strange ones; but for sufferings, instead of fetter-galls, I bring back, as you see, a new suit of clothes; instead of an empty and starved stomach, a surfeit from good victuals and good liquor; and whereas I went into Ely on foot, I came out on a fast hackney.”
So into William’s tent he went; and there he told his tale.
“So, Dade, my friend?” quoth the Duke, in high good humor, for he loved Dade, “you seem to have been in good company?”
“Never in better, Sire, save in your presence. Of the earls and knights in Ely, all I can say is, God’s pity that they are rebels, for more gallant and courteous knights or more perfect warriors never saw I, neither in Normandy nor at Constantinople, among the Varangers themselves.”
“Eh! and what are the names of these gallants; for you have used your eyes and ears, of course?”
“Edwin and Morcar, the earls,—two fine young lads.”
“I know it. Go on”; and a shade passed over William’s brow, as he thought of his own falsehood, and his fair Constance, weeping in vain for the fair bridegroom whom he had promised to her.
“Siward Barn, as they call him, the boy Orgar, and Thurkill Barn. Those are the knights. Egelwin, bishop of Durham, is there too; and besides them all, and above them all, Hereward. The like of that knight I may have seen. His better saw I never.”
“Sir fool!” said Earl Warrenne, who had not yet—small blame to him—forgotten his brother’s death. “They have soused thy brains with their muddy ale, till thou knowest not friend from foe. What! hast thou to come hither praising up to the King’s Majesty such an outlawed villain as that, with whom no honest knight would keep company?”
“If you, Earl Warrenne, ever found Dade drunk or lying, it is more than the King here has done.”
“Let him speak, Earl,” said William. “I have not an honester man in my camp; and he speaks for my information, not for yours.”
“Then for yours will I speak, Sir King. These men treated me knightly, and sent me away without ransom.”
“They had an eye to their own profit, it seems,” grumbled the Earl.
“But force me they did to swear on the holy Gospels that I should tell your Majesty the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And I keep my oath,” quoth Dade.
“Go on, then, without fear or favor. Are there any other men of note in the island!”
“No.”
“Are they in want of provisions?”
“Look how they have fattened me.”
“What do they complain of?”
“I will tell you, Sir King. The monks, like many more, took fright at the coming over of our French men of God to set right all their filthy, barbarous ways; and that is why they threw Ely open to the rebels.”
“I will be even with the sots,” quoth William.
“However, they think that danger blown over just now; for they have a story among them, which, as my Lord the King never heard before, he may as well hear now.”
“Eh?”
“How your Majesty should have sent across the sea a whole shipload of French monks.”
“That have I, and will more, till I reduce these swine
Comments (0)