Charles MacFarlane

“ On this Christmas eve, like all well-regulated religious houses and all good Christians, we fast upon a banquet of eels and fish. At midnight we have the midnight mass, chanted in our best manner; and to-morrow we feast indeed, and give up all our souls to joy. To-morrow, then, our bells shall be struck upon so that the Norman knights and men-at-arms shall hear them in Cam-Bridge Castle, and shall tremble while they hear! And our Saxon flags, and the banners of our saints, yea, the great banner of Saint Etheldreda itself, shall be hung out on our walls! ”

“ Not these deep hollows of the earth, nor all the weight of all the walls and arched roofs and springing towers of Ely Abbey can crush or confine, or keep down, the immortal spirit of man! Mildred! my Lord Hereward! my noble lady and mistress! and thou, oh joyous and Saxon-hearted Lord Abbat Thurstan! if traitors have it their own way here, we meet in heaven, where there be no Normans and no Saxon traitors! ”

“ The sword-bearer was still sleeping happily when the monk and the lay-brother came into the dark vault with the bright shining cresset; but as the light fell upon his eyelids he awoke, and saw Father Kenulph standing over him; and then he started up and said, “I have been dreaming a true dream; for when did Father Kenulph do aught but good to honest man and true Saxon! Ah! Tom of Tottington, art thou here too? Then shall I not be buried alive or starved to death!”
“Elfric,” said Kenulph, “thou art safe and free, so rise and follow us. ”

“ The toads, which fatten in darkness, among the noxious and colourless weeds which grow where light is not, and the earth-worms crawled over and over him, but without awakening him, or giving him any disturbance in his deep sleep. And as he slept, that black and horrent dungeon, in which his body lay, was changed, by the bright visions which blessed his sleep, into scenes as bright as the chapel of Saint Etheldreda in the abbey church, on the great day of 419 the saint’s festival, when a thousand waxen tapers are burning, and the whole air is loaded with incense and with music. ”

“ But, Ivo, the mud and slime of our fens are not so foul as the work thou hast each time had in hand! At Ey thou thoughtest to have surprised a defenceless maiden, and here hast thou been coming against a young matron, my right noble wife, and a poor defenceless little township and a handful of monks. Ivo, thou art a big man and hast a big voice, yet art thou but a braggart and coward! ’Tis well thou hast not had time to do mischief at the manor-house, for hadst thou done any, I would have hacked thee to pieces! ”

“ I needs must laugh when I hear that Girolamo of Salerno, the witch-seeker and the destroyer of witches, the sworn foe to all magic save the Magia Alba, which is no magic at all, but only science, should be named as a wizard and necromancer! Oh! ye good doctors, and teachers of Salerno who flourished and began to make a school for the study of Nature before the Normans came among us, think of this—think of your pupil, penitent, and devotee, being taken in these dark septentrional regions for a sorcerer! ”

“ True knighthood is in the heart and soul of man, and not in the ceremonies. Were I not already a truer knight than thou, I would hang thee and thy brother to these willow-trees, and butcher thy men here, even as too many of ye Normans have butchered defenceless Saxon prisoners after surrender. Give up thy sword, man, or it may not be in my power to save thee from the fury of my people! ”

“ Quoth the Lord of Brunn, “Ye will not do the thing ye name! or, an ye do it, bitterly will ye rue it! Your names be all down in a book of doom: the Normans will mutilate and butcher ye all! Better that ye die fighting! The battle is not lost, if ye will but think it is not. I was with King Harold at the battle by Stamford Bridge, and in a worse plight than now; and yet on that day we conquered. So, up hearts, my Saxon lords and thanes! Let us make one charge more for King Harold and the liberties of England! Nay, we will make a score good charges ere we die!” ”

“ We are to be driven forth empty-handed and brokenhearted, and our places are to be supplied by rapacious foreigners who speak not and understand not the tongue of the English people! Ah woe! was it for this that Saxon saints and martyrs died and bequeathed their bones to our keeping and their miracles to our superintendence; that Saxon kings and queens descended from their thrones to live among us, and die among us, and enrich us, so that we might give a beauty to holiness, a pomp and glory to the worship of heaven, and ample alms, and still more ample employment to the poor? ”

“ Was it to fatten herds of alien monks, who follow in the bloody track of conquest and devastation, and come among us with swords and staves, and clad in mail even like your men-at-arms, that we and our predecessors in this cell have laboured without intermission to drain these bogs and fens, to make roads for the foot of man through this miry wilderness, to cut broad channels to carry off the waste waters to the great deep, to turn quagmires into bounteous corn fields, and meres into green pastures? ”

“ Here Elfric, who had been well indoctrinated in the days of his youth by the best of the monks of Spalding, crossed himself and said, that it was God himself who had enjoined the forgiveness of our enemies, and that holy men had ever declared that the moribund died easiest when he forgave all the wrongs that had been done him, and died in peace with all mankind.
Girolamo had to gasp for breath before he could speak; but at length he said, “Saxon, I die in peace with all mankind, or with all that profess the Christian faith—save only the Normans. I forgive all men as I hope to be forgiven. ”

“ We will burn him alive when we catch him, but until that hour comes there is nothing to hope and much to fear from him, for he hath given up his life and soul to vengeance, and he hath more skill in the art of war, and is more versed in the diabolical arts of magic, than any other man upon earth.”
“But what of the Saxon Abbat of Ely?” said the prelate who had before spoken about the efficacy of bribes, “what of this Thurstan?”
“There is not a stubborner Saxon out of hell,” replied Odo, Bishop of Bayeux; “he hath been tried long since. Thou mightest as well attempt to bribe the raging sea! ”

“ Touching my poor house and lands at Brunn, it is not by a mean submission to Duke William that I should ever keep them from Raoul the Norman plunderer that had seized upon them. They must be kept at the sword’s point, and at the sword’s point must these thine own good house and lands be maintained. The protection of Lanfranc, given to the noble maiden and heiress of Ey, will not be extended to the wife of Hereward of Brunn, whom Normans call a rebel and an outlaw. Oh Alftrude, the wife of a soldier like me, and in a war like this, hath need of a soldier’s heart within her own bosom! ”

“ The brave live when the cowards perish: the dread carnage falls upon those who run away, or who are deaf to the voice of their leader. Our cause is 181 just, and will be protected and blessed by heaven. We fight only for our own—for our own country, our own king, our own ancient laws and usages, our own church. The Lord Hereward is as politic as he is brave; he is famed even beyond seas as one of the greatest of commanders; and with such a cause and such a leader, upheld and followed as they must be by all honest and stout-hearted Englishmen, we cannot fail of victory. ”

“ Was, then, Girolamo of Salerno a likely man to be a spy or fautor to the Normans in England? Thurstan acknowledged that he was not. “But,” said he, “some men are so prone to suspicion that they suspect everybody and everything that is near to them; and some men, nay, even some monks and brothers of this very house, are so envious of my state and such foes to my peace of mind, that whenever they see me more happy and fuller of hope than common, they vamp me up some story or conjure some spectrum to disquiet me and sadden me! Now, what said our prior and cellarer no later than last night? ”

“ Three butts of that catapult would shiver the postern gate; that tower in front commands the battlements; the bridges of boats will give access to every part of the walls. This could not be done in one short night, except by magic; but magic is not to be withstood by sinful men-at-arms, and our chaplain is gone to feast with the monks of Crowland. Moreover, oh Raoul, we have consumed nearly all our provisions in our own feastings, and so should starve in a day or two if we could hold out so long—but that is impossible. ”

“ In all the north of England there had been a dismal slaughter: from York to Durham not an inhabited village remained—fire and the sword had made a wilderness there—and from Durham north to Hexham, from the Wear to the Tyne, the remorseless conqueror, Herodes, Herode ferocior, a crueller Herod than the Herod of old, had laid waste the land and slaughtered the people. York Minster had been destroyed by fire, and every church, chapel, and religious house had been either destroyed or plundered by the Normans. ”

“ Now Elfric was there, with palmers and novices trooping all around him, and repeating (albeit dry-mouthed and without cups or horns to flourish) the wassail of the lords and prelates, “Elfric the novice!” If at that moment my Lord Abbat Thurstan or Father Adhelm had bidden the youth go and drive the Normans from the strong stone keep of their doubly-moated and trebly-walled castle by Cam-Bridge, Elfric would have gone and have tried to do it. He no longer trod upon base earth, his head struck the stars, as the poets say. ”

“ Knut, the king’s son, being uncertain and suspicious, like one that had treacherous plans in his own mind, despatched one of his smallest and poorest keels with a crafty and keen-sighted chief up the Wash and up the Ouse, to confer with Abbat Thurstan and the Saxon chiefs at Ely, to spy into the condition of the Camp of Refuge, and to invite the Lord Abbat and some of the great chiefs to come down to Lynn, in order to hold there a solemn conference with his jarls and chiefs. ”

“ Elfric the sword-bearer, from whom better things might have been expected, considering his training in a godly house, had been seen mixing and using these hellish preparations which he could not have done if he had not first spat upon the cross and covenanted with witches and devils. Nay, so bold-faced had this young man been in his crime that he hath done this openly! The stranger had been seen many times in battle, and in the thickest of the fight, yet, while the Saxons fell thick around him, and every man that was not killed was wounded, he got no hurt,—no not the smallest! ”

“ Why hast thou caused to be assailed on the roads, and 35 beaten with staves and swords, the lay-brothers and servants of this house? Why didst thou come at the dead of night like a chief of robbers with thy men-at-arms and cut-throats to break in upon us and to wound and slay the servants of the Lord, who have gotten thy king’s peace, and letters of protection from the Archbishop Lanfranc? [42] Oh, Ivo Taille-Bois! tell me why thou shouldst not be overtaken by the vengeance of man’s law in this world, and by eternal perdition in the next? ”

“ More than one of the men-at-arms had the mortification of being knocked down and ridden over by a Crowland man mounted on his own war-horse; several of the monks got fresh immersions in the canals. Had the Saxons so disposed, not a Norman of all that company would have escaped with his life, for they were all as helpless as babes in their swaddling-clothes. But Hereward of the true English heart had conjured Elfric and the Salernitan to shed as little blood and destroy as few lives as possible ”

“ As the enemy came near, the Saxons set up a shout, and the scared horses and asses tied together on the road, set up their heels with such a kicking and braying and neighing as were never seen and heard; and up started from the sedge by the river bank the score of good Saxon archers that had gone a little up the river in the boats, and whiz went their arrows into the bowels of the horses the Normans were riding, and every arrow that did not kill, disabled some horse or man, the archers in the sedges being too near their aim to throw away a single arrow. ”

“ And when the Saxons embraced the Gospel as preached by Saint Augustine and his disciples, who had been so devout as the Lords of Brunn? who so bountiful to the shrines of saints and religious houses? who so ready to fight unto death in defence of the church? Notable it was, and known unto all that dwelt in the land of fens, that the house of Crowland, and the house of Ely, and the shrine of Saint Etheldreda, had been served in the hour of need by many of Hereward’s forefathers. ”

“ As when a frighted ram is seized by the horns and dragged by the shepherd hind through the brake, all the silly flock that could not move before follow him one by one, even so did our Norman monks and men-at-arms follow the first monk through the window and into the foul moat! ”