CHAPTER XIV.

HEREWARD IS MADE KNIGHT.

Before the marriage festival was well ended, the festival of the Epiphany arrived. The Lord of Brunn could not go to Ely; but he was now in constant correspondence with the good Lord Abbat and the prelates and lay nobles there; and in sending off his last Norman prisoners, he had sent to tell the abbat that he must hold him excused, and that he would eat the paschal lamb with him, hoping before the Easter festival to have gained many more advantages over the Normans. The returning messenger brought Hereward much good advice and some money from Ely. Among the many pieces of good counsel which the Abbat Thurstan gave was this, that the young Lord of Brunn should lose no time in getting himself made a lawful soldier or knight, according to the forms and religious rites of that Saxon military confraternity which had been authorised by the ancient laws of the country, and which had existed long before the Normans came into England with their new-fashioned rules and unholy rites. The great lay lords at Ely and in the Camp of Refuge had all been initiated, and their swords had been blessed by Saxon priests; and as all these knights and lords had agreed in appointing Hereward to the supreme command, it behoved him to be inaugurated in the Saxon knighthood; otherwise there would be a mark of inferiority upon him, and people might proclaim that he was not a lawful soldier. Now the young Lord of Brunn had thought well of these things before, and had been reminded of them by the taunting Normans. Any Lord Abbat or other prelate could perform the rites. The Abbat of Crowland had now returned to his house, and would rejoice to confer the honour upon Hereward; but Hereward’s own uncle, and by his father’s side, was Lord Abbat of Peterborough;[157] and not only was it more suitable that the rites should be performed by him and in his church, but also was it urgent that the young Lord of Brunn should march speedily upon Peterborough in order to rescue his kinsman and the Saxon monks that yet lived under his rule from the oppression and tyranny of the Normans. This uncle of Hereward and Lord Abbat of Peterborough, whose secular name was Brand, had been sundry times plundered and maltreated, and now expected every day to be dispossessed. Brand had not long been Lord Abbat, and he had put on the Peterborough mitre, of silver gilded, at a time of the greatest trouble. His predecessor the Abbat Leofric[158] had gone forth with the English army of King Harold; and, after Hastings, he had sickened, and returning unto Peterborough, he had died on the night of Allhallow mass: God honour his soul! In his day was all bliss and all good at Peterborough. He was beloved of all. But afterwards, as we shall see, came all wretchedness and all evil on the minster: God have mercy on it! All that he could do had been done by good Leofric’s successor. Abbat Brand had given a large sum of money to Duke William, in the view of keeping the house and convent free from molestation. Always a rich and always a bountiful man had been the uncle of Lord Hereward; and while yet a cloister monk and one of the obedientiarii, he had given to the monastery many lands, as in Muscham, Schotter, Scalthorp, Yolthorp, Messingham, Riseby, Normanby, Althorp, and many other parts. Judge ye, therefore, whether the brothers of Peterborough were not largely indebted to Abbat Brand,[159] and whether Abbat Brand was not the proper man to confer Saxon knighthood on his nephew. After the disastrous journey of Ivo Taille-Bois and his brother to Ey, the news of which was rumoured all over the country, Brand had dispatched an intelligencer to his bold nephew, and had sent other messengers to his neighbours, and to all the good Saxon people that dwelt between Peterborough and Stamford. He had beseeched Hereward to march to his rescue, and to the rescue of his house; and Hereward, like a duteous nephew and loving kinsman, had sent to promise that he would be with him with good two hundred armed men on the octave of the Epiphany.

But, before going for Peterborough, the young Lord of Brunn had much to do in the way of collecting men and arms, strengthening the house at Ey and the house at Brunn, and the abbey of Crowland, and the succursal cell at Spalding; and much time he spent with Girolamo of Salerno in devising war stratagems, and in planning the means by which the whole fen country might be rendered still more defensible than it was, as by the cutting of new ditches, the making of sluices and flood-gates, movable bridges, and the like. The men-at-arms, left by Ivo Taille-Bois to guard the manor-house near to Spalding, becoming sorely alarmed, and despairing of finding their way across the fens, sent a Saxon messenger to the returned Prior of Spalding, with an offer to surrender the house to the soldiers of Lord Hereward, if the good prior would only secure them in their lives by extending over them the shield of the church. The conditions were immediately agreed to: a garrison of armed Saxons took possession of the moated and battlemented house, and the Normans were sent as war prisoners to Ely. Hereward gave orders that all due respect should be paid to the house, and to all other the goods and chattels of the Ladie Lucia; for albeit that ladie was forcibly the wife of Ivo, she was cousin to Alftrude and relative to King Harold, and her heart was believed to be wholly Saxon. As Brunn was a house of greater strength, and farther removed from that skirt or boundary of the fen country upon which the Normans were expected to collect their strength, Hereward removed his bride to Brunn, and there he left her in the midst of friends and defenders; for his followers were now so numerous that he could keep his promise with his uncle Brand without leaving his bride exposed to danger, and without weakening one of the sundry posts he had occupied, as well along other rivers as upon the banks of the Welland.

By the octave of the Epiphany, being the thirteenth day of the Wolf-month, or kalends of January, and the day of Saint Kentigern, a Saxon abbat and confessor, the Lord of Brunn was at the Abbey of Peterborough with more than two hundred well-armed Saxons! and on that very night—a night of the happiest omen—was begun his initiation in the old abbey church. First, Hereward confessed himself to the prior, and received absolution. After this he watched all night in the church, fasting and praying. At times a cloister monk prayed in company with him; but for the most part he was left alone in the ghostly silence of the place, where light was there none save the cressets that burned dimly before the effigies of his patron saint. But while he knelt there, Elfric his faithful sword-bearer stood guard outside the door of the church, whiling away the time as best he could, by calling to mind all the legends and godly stories connected with the Peterborough Abbey and its first founders, and _specialiter_ that marvellously pretty miracle which Saint Chad performed in the presence of his recent convert King Wolfere. Which miracle was this, according to the faithful relation of Walter of Whittlesey, a monk of the house: One day, after praying a long while with King Wolfere in his oratory, the weather being warm, Saint Chad put off his vestment and hung it upon a sunbeam, and the sunbeam supported it so that it fell not to the ground; which King Wolfere seeing, put off his gloves and belt, and essayed to hang them also upon the sunbeam, but they presently fell to the ground, whereat King Wolfere was the more confirmed in the faith.[160] In the morning, at the hour of mass Hereward placed his sword upon the high altar; and when mass had been said, and he had confessed himself and been absolved again, the Lord Abbat took the now hallowed sword and put it about Hereward’s neck with a benediction, and communicating the holy mysteries, finished the simple and altogether religious ceremonial: and from thenceforward Hereward remained a lawful soldier and Saxon knight. In the good Saxon times men were never so vain and sinful as to believe that a knight could make knight, or that any lay lord, or even any sovereign prince or king, could give admittance into the confraternity of knights by giving the accolade with strokes of the flat of the sword upon the shoulders and with the tying on of spurs and hauberks, and the girding on the sword, and such like vanities. These things were brought in among us by the Normans; and being brought in, our knights lost their religious character, and ceasing to be the defenders of the church, and the protectors of all that wanted protection, they became unhallowed oppressors, depredators, barefaced robbers, and the scourges of their kind. And it was so at the very first that these Normans did affect to contemn and abhor our old Saxon custom of consecration of a soldier, calling our Saxon knights in derision priest-made knights and shaveling soldiers, and by other names that it were sinful to repeat.

The good Abbat Brand had now nothing more to fear for his shrines and chalices. Every Norman that was in Peterborough, or in the vicinage of that town, fled to Stamford; and the Lord of Brunn, with the help of the Salernitan, strengthened the abbey, and made good works to defend the approaches to it, even as he had done at Crowland and elsewhere. Happy was Abbat Brand, and hopeful was he of the deliverance of all England; but he lived not long after this happy day, and when he was gone cowardice and treachery invaded his house, and monks who had lost their English natures made bargains and compacts with the Normans, and brought about many calamities and shames, as will be seen hereafter. If Brand had lived, or if Hereward could have remained at Peterborough these things would not have happened, and disgrace would not have been brought down upon a convent which for four hundred and more years had been renowned as the seat of devotion, hospitality, and patriotism. But the Lord of Brunn could not stay long on the banks of the Nene, his presence being demanded in many other places. Between the octave of the Epiphany and the quinzane of Pasche, Hereward recovered or liberated twenty good townships near the north-western skirts of the great fen-country, fought and defeated Norman troops in ten battles, and took from them five new castles which they had built. A good score of Norman knights were made captive to his sword; but he had not the chance to encounter either Ivo Taille-Bois or his brother.

As the paschal festival approached, Hereward received various urgent messages from the Abbat of Ely. These messages did not all relate to the coming festivity, and the promise of the Lord of Brunn to be the Lord Abbat’s guest: while Hereward had been beating the Normans, and gaining strength on the side of Peterborough and Stamford, the Normans had been making themselves very strong at Cam-bridge, and were now threatening to make another grand attack upon the Camp of Refuge from that side. Abbat Thurstan therefore required immediate assistance, and hoped that Hereward would bring with him all the armed men he could. Moreover, jealousies and heartburnings had again broken out among the Saxon chiefs, who had all pledged themselves to acknowledge the supreme authority of the Lord of Brunn. If Hereward would only come, these dissensions would cease. Other weighty matters must be discussed; and the discussion would be naught if Hereward were not present. Thus strongly urged, Hereward left his young wife in his house at Brunn, and taking with him nearly three hundred armed men, he began his march down the Welland in the hope of raising more men in that fenniest of the fen-countries, which lies close on the Wash, and with the intention of crossing the Wash, and ascending the Ouse in ships and boats. It grieved him to leave the Ladie Alftrude, and much did it grieve Elfric his sword-bearer to quit maid Mildred; but Hereward thought that his wife would be safe in his strong house at Brunn, and Elfric was made happy by the assurance that as soon as they came back again he should be allowed to marry Mildred. The Ladie Alftrude had shed a few tears, and her handmaiden had made sundry louder lamentations; but the lady was full of heart and courage and hope, nor did the maid lament out of any fear.

When the Lord of Brunn moored his little fleet of barks, and raised his standard on the shores of the Wash, many more good fen-men came trooping to him, as he had expected. Many came from Hoiland.[161] And how did they come? They came marching through the mires and waters upon high stilts, looking all legs, or, at a distance, like herons of some giant breed. Voyagers have related that in that sandy country which lies along the Biscayan gulf, and between Bordeaux and Spain, men and women and children all walk upon high stalking poles or stilts, as the only means of getting across their soft, deep sands; and here, in the most marshy part of the fens, men, women, and children were trained to use the same long wooden legs, not to get over dry loose sand, but to get over water and quagmire, and broad and deep ditches. These stilted men of Hoiland, who were all minded to go help in the Camp of Refuge, threw their stilts[162] into Lord Hereward’s bark; which was as if men of another country should throw away their legs, for without these stilts, we ween, there was no walking or wayfaring in Hoiland: but the thing was done to show that they were devoted to the good cause and put an entire trust in the victorious Lord of Brunn, and that they would go with him, legs, arms, and hearts, wherever he might choose to lead them.

At Lynn, on the other side of the Wash, still more Saxons joined Lord Hereward’s army, some of them coming in boats, and some marching by land. Ha! had there been but five Herewards in England, England would have been saved!

It was on the eve of the most solemn, yet most joyous festival of Pasche, or on the 24th day of the month Aprilis, in the year of grace one thousand and seventy-one, that the Lord of Brunn, arrived with his host at the great house of Ely, to the inconceivable joy of every true Saxon heart that was there. Pass we the welcome and the feast, and come we to the councils and deliberations in the Aula Magna of the house. On the third day after the paschal Sunday all the Saxon lords and chiefs, prelates and cloister-monks, met early in the morning, or immediately after prime, and ceased not their deliberations until the dinner hour. On one great point there was no difference of opinion—the victorious Lord of Brunn was to hold supreme command over all the troops and bands, of whatsoever description, collected in the Camp of Refuge, and have the entire management of the war wherever it should be carried. On other heads of debate opinions were very various, but the greatest divergency of all was upon the question whether the Danes should or should not be invited again to the assistance of the Saxons. When all had spoken on the one side or the other, and with much vehemence of speech, the Lord of Brunn, who had been forced to correct his taciturn habits, and to speak on many occasions at greater length than he had ever fancied he should speak, rose and said—

“Prelates and chiefs, ancients and younger men, if one so young as myself may deliver opinions in this assemblage, I would say let us take heed ere we tamper any more with Danemarck. The woes of the Anglo-Saxons first began when the Danes crossed the seas in their nailed ships and came among them first to rob and plunder, and next to seek a settlement in this fat and fertile land of England. Our rubric is filled with Saxon martyrs butchered by the Danes. This noble house of religion where we now consult was plundered and burned by the Danes; and the Danes slew all the ancient brotherhood of the house, and did the foulest things upon the tombs of the four Saxon virgins and saints—Saint Etheldreda, Saint Sexburga, Saint Ermenilda, Saint Withburga. I am lately from the Abbey of Peterborough, where I read upon the monumental stones the names of the good Saxon abbats and monks of that house that were murthered by the Danes. The same thing happened at Crowland, and at fifty more religious houses. The Danes have been the great makers of Saxon martyrdoms. The worst famed of our Saxon kings are those who submitted to them or failed in conquering them; the name of King Alfred is honoured chiefly for that he defeated the Danes in an hundred battles, and checked their rapacity and blood-thirstiness.”

“Oh, Hereward of Brunn!” said the bishop of Lindisfarne, “this is all true; but all this happened when the Danes were unconverted Pagans.”

“But good my Lord Bishop of Lindisfarne,” quoth the Lord of Brunn, “let us note well the conduct of the Danes since they have been Christian men, and we shall find as Saxons that we have not much to praise them for. Had it not been for the unmeet alliance between Lord Tostig and the strangers, and the invasion of Northumbria and York, and the need King Harold lay under of breaking that unholy league, and fighting Tostig in the great battle by Stamford Bridge, King Harold would never have been worsted at the battle of Hastings, for his armed forces would have been entire, and fresh for the fight, instead of being thinned as they were by that first bloody combat, and worn out by that long march from York unto Hastings.”

“It was an army of Norwegians that fought King Harold by Stamford Bridge,” said the Prior of Ely.

“I fought in that battle,” quoth Hereward, “and know that it was a mixed army of Danes and Norwegians, even like most of the armies that, for two hundred years and more, devastated this land and the kingdom of Scotland. But let that pass. Those armies came as open enemies: let us see the conduct of an army that came as friends. Only last year the good Saxon people from the Tyne to the York Ouse were deserted in the hour of success and victory by an army of Danes, commanded by the brothers of the King of Danemarck, who had been invited into the country by the suffering Saxons, and who had sworn upon the relics of saints not to leave this land until it was clear of the Normans. The two royal Danes took the gold of the son of Robert the Devil and the harlot of Falaise, and thereupon took their departure in their ships, and left the Saxons, with their plan all betrayed, to be slaughtered in heaps, and the whole north country to be turned into a solitude and desert, a Golgotha, or place of skulls.”

“This is too true,” said the Bishop of Durham; “and terrible is all this truth!”

“But,” said the Bishop of Lindisfarne, “the King of Danemarck’s brothers are not the King of Danemarck himself. We hear that the king is incensed at what those brothers did, and that he hath banished them from his presence and from the land of Danemarck, and that he hath sworn by the rood[163] that he will send four hundred keels across the ocean, and take himself the command of the army.”

“Yet even if he come,” quoth the Lord of Brunn, “he may prove as faithless and as greedy for gold as his brothers; or he may set up his pretended right to the throne of King Harold, our absent but not lost lord, and in that case we shall find that the Saxon people will fall from our side; for if they are to be cursed with a new and foreign master, they will not overmuch care whether his name be William of Normandie or Svend of Danemarck.”

“Assuredly not quite so,” said the Prior of Ely, who opposed Hereward the more because the Lord Abbat Thurstan was disposed to agree with him; “assuredly not quite so, my Lord of Brunn, for there hath been large admixture of Danish blood in our Anglo-Saxon race,[164] and Danes and English sprang, _ab origine_, from nearly one and the same great hive of nations in the north.”

“And so also do these North men, or Normans,” said Hereward, “only they have more affinity to Danes and Norwegians than to us; and while the Danish pirates were ravaging the coasts of England, Rollo, the North man, ravaged the coasts of France, and gained a settlement and sovereignty, and gave the name of Normandie to the country which has now sent forth these new conquerors and devastators upon England. Trace back our blood to the source, and I, and the Lord Abbat Thurstan as well as I, and many other true Englishmen, natives of the English Danelagh, may be called half Danes; but a man can have only one country, and only one people that he can call countrymen, and these admixtures of blood in parts and parcels of England will not be considered by the English people at large; and let it be Danes, or let it be Normans, it will be the same to them.”

“But,” said the Abbat of Cockermouth, “the Danes be now very poor, and their king will not be able to raise an army sufficiently strong to aim at any great thing by himself.”

“And therefore is it,” quoth the Lord of Brunn, “that come king or come king’s brothers, they will get what they can from us poor Saxons as the price of their assistance, then get all the gold they can get from the Normans as the price of their neutrality, then betray all such of our secrets as they possess, and then embark and sail away for their own country, leaving us in a far worse plight than before. I say, let us not send for them, or ask their aid at all! If a people cannot defend themselves by their own swords, they will never be defended at all. If England cannot be saved without calling in one foreign people to act against another, she will never be saved. If this king of Danemarck comes this year he will act as his kinsmen did last year, and we shall rue the day of his coming. Wherefore, I say, let us pray for the speedy return of King Harold, and let us keep what little store of gold and silver we possess to nurture and pay our own native soldiers, and to purchase in the Netherlands such munition and warlike gear as we may yet need; but let us not waste it by sending into Danemarck.”

“Were our enemies less numerous and powerful,” said one of the chiefs, “we still might hope to stand our ground, in this wet and difficult corner of England, alone and unaided!”

“We shall be the better able to stand our ground against any foe if we be on our guard against false friends, and keep our money and our own counsels,” said Abbat Thurstan. “Lord Hereward hath reason for all he saith; take my word for it he is right.”

But there were many there that would not take my Lord Abbat’s word, and that would not be persuaded by the arguments of the Lord of Brunn; and in an inauspicious hour it was determined to send an embassage from the lords and prelates in the Camp of Refuge to the king and lords and free rovers of Danemarck, to implore their aid and assistance, and to present them with a sum of money, as the earnest of a large future reward. The strong money-box at the shrines of Ely church, wherein the pilgrims deposited their offerings, was now in reality broken open and emptied; at which some of the unworthy members of the house who had most opposed Hereward and their Lord Abbat went about whispering and muttering, in the corners of the cloisters, and even among the townfolk of Ely, that sacrilege had been committed. Yet was the total sum thus procured so very disproportionate to the well-known appetites of the Danes for money, that a collection was made in the Camp of Refuge, and even Jews were secretly invited from Norwich and St. Edmundbury in order to see whether they could be tempted to advance some money upon bonds: and here were raised fresh whisperings and murmurings about impiety, together with severe censures on Abbat Thurstan for want of uniformity or consistency of conduct, seeing that he had formerly been the sworn foe to all the Israelites whom the Normans had brought over in their train; and that, nevertheless, the convent were now sending for the Jews to open accounts and dealings with them. It suited not these back-biters to remember that they themselves, in determining that the aid of the Danes should be required, had agreed that money should and must be sent to them; and that when Abbat Thurstan said there was but very little money in the house, they themselves had recommended sending for the Israelites who made a trade of usury. All points connected with the unhappy business had been decided, after the public discussions in the hall, by the members of the house in close chapter, wherein the Lord Abbat had only given his vote as one. But these unfaithful monks and untrue Englishmen hoped to make people believe that their opinions had been overruled, and that Thurstan was answerable for everything.

It was also noticed—although not by the abbat and the monks that were faithful unto him, and that were never allowed to hear any of the whisperings and murmurings—that several of those who had most eagerly voted for calling in the assistance of the Danes shrugged their shoulders whenever men mentioned the expected invasion of the fen country and the new attack on the Camp of Refuge, and spoke of the Norman as a power too formidable to be resisted by the English, or by any allies that the English could now procure.