Man With a Sword Read online

  At last, when Hereward was sure that God was not angry with him, he said, ‘Lord, this is my offer; bring my dear ones back to me and I will serve You, and see that You are served in this land, whatever the cost.’

  His eyes strayed to his weapons, and his thoughts swung away a little.

  ‘But, God,’ he said sternly, as though talking to a troop of soldiers, ‘if You do not bring them back to me, then I will not answer for the rest. Is that agreed, God?’

  For a while there was nothing different to be heard in the town. The doves cooed as always in the square, the river burbled on its way down from the Wolds to the great Humber, the solid wooden wheels of the farm wagons crunched over the cobbled streets of the town. Then, far away and faint, a sound came from the blue sky. It was a hawk’s feeding-call. Up above the thatch and tiles of the little town the questing bird had seen a partridge skimming the walls and barns.

  Now the hawk came down with a swish of pinions and a scream that grew louder and louder.

  Nimble, the partridge swung into the church porch and the safety of the oaken stools and trestles. The hawk, unable to stay its furious course, struck the porch and fell gasping before the door. Hereward rose and went to see what had happened. The bird, dying, glanced at him out of a raging amber eye, its feathers twisted and broken, its claws clenching on nothing in its last agony.

  Under the clerk’s high desk, the fat partridge chirked and twittered with fear. Then seeing the hawk dead, it danced out on pudgy feet, feathers preened, and swept over the churchyard chittering a silly victory cry.

  Hereward saw this, as he turned the dead bird over with his foot. And he wondered what it meant - whether he was the hawk or the partridge; whether God was the hawk. Whether this was God’s answer.

  The little snuffling priest stopped by him, his eyes red-rimmed, his nose needing wiping in the chill of the early northern spring.

  ‘That was a fine bird, master,’ said the priest.

  Hereward nodded and said, ‘It died for a prey that was hardly worth the taking, priest.’

  The small man nodded, then said, ‘Men are the same. They die for nothing. No one can stop a man from doing that. At Stamfordbridge, at Hastings, and now again at York, they die. Always they die.’

  Hereward went back and fetched his sword and dagger. He buckled them on as he spoke to the priest.

  ‘Is it not their affair?’ he asked.

  The priest smiled and crossed himself. ‘Nothing is ever a man’s affair simply, master,’ he said. ‘It is between a man and God. Yet some are so stupid that they think they can rule their lives without God’s aid. And some are even more vicious - for they think they can strike a bargain with God, as they would with a farmer selling oats, or a fishwife down on the wharf with her baskets.’

  Hereward said slowly, ‘A man cannot make a bargain with God, you say, friend?’

  The priest shook his head. His nose was Very red in the wind that blew up from the Ancholme.

  ‘Master,’ he said, ‘with God there are no bargains to be made. Everything belongs to God - so the man and what he bargains for both belong to God. How then may a man bargain for what is already God’s? It is common sense, friend.’

  Hereward wanted to say more to him, but the man had gone into the church again, to watch over the candles; and Hereward felt that it would be beneath his pride to follow him and ask for more reasons.

  He went back to his lodging, somewhat troubled in mind. An hour later a carle came in the door and said, ‘Strap on your sword, Hereward. Swein of Denmark is coming, and he holds you to your oath of fealty. You are his man. So you must aid him.’

  Hereward said, ‘What does Swein wish me to do, fellow?’

  The carle smiled and answered, ‘He wishes you to raise the good Danes of Lincolnshire and to lead them down to sack the Golden Borough. Swein will come up the Witham or the Ouse and meet you by the time you have collected the plunder.’

  Hereward said, aghast, ‘Sack the Golden Borough, carle? Sack Peterborough? That is a heathen act.’

  The man began to pick his teeth with a thorn and said, ‘Such words mean nothing to me. Heathen - Christian - Muslim… I have heard them all. And I have fought for and against them all. There is no virtue, or vice, in that. All over the world men are fighting “for God”, they say. At various times, all win, and all lose. The corpse that fought for Allah is as dead as the one that fought for Christ.’

  Hereward remembered his prayer in the little church that day, and he said, ‘Nay, I’ll not have that, carle. A true Christian goes to Heaven - that’s the difference.’

  But the carle went on picking his teeth, and only said, ‘I have fought with Muslims who say they will go to Paradise. I have an uncle at Hedeby who still thinks he will end up at Odin’s table in Valhalla. The little priest down the road at the church will tell you that a warrior goes to Heaven. It seems to me that the reward is the same - just as the death is the same. Nay, thegn, what seems to matter most is not the death or the afterdeath - but the pickings, while a man is alive and standing on his two feet. That is why you should sack the Golden Borough, for there is more wealth, good golden wealth, there than a man could find outside Miklagard. Get to it, thegn, and do not be late when Swein comes.’

  17. The Golden Borough

  So, with great misgivings, Hereward gathered about him a swarming army of Lindsey men, folk who spoke Danish before English, folk who hated Saxons almost as much as Normans. Between Brigg and Grantham he collected two thousand landless men with swords and spears, and together they went down the wooded roads towards Peterborough, each with the dream of plunder and of a fortune in his head.

  Hereward did not dream of gold; he dreamed of the different reward that Swein would bring him - of Euphemia and his son. For those two he would have sacked the West Minster, let alone Peterborough.

  As the men marched down, often by night, they told each other that they were not acting evilly; that the five great abbeys of Peterborough, Thomey, Crowland, Ramsey, and Ely were in the hands of the devil, and should be freed. It was different, they argued, when Abbot Brand held Peterborough - for Brand spoke Danish and held for the old Danish kings. But Brand was dead now, and William had appointed a foreigner to look after the Golden Borough. This was Thorold of Fecamp, who had come up from Malmesbury to take control, and who was more of a bloody knight than a churchman.

  By the end of May, Here ward’s untidy army was within sight of the fenland. Looking across the marshy wastes to where the tall tower of Peterborough rose, Hereward said to his chief carle, ‘When I was a lad, my old father held lands here. Old Abbot Ulfketil of Crowland assigned some of the Abbey’s estate to my father, in the vill of Rippingdale. But he was burnt out when Harthacnut avenged his tax-collectors.’

  The carle said, ‘Now would be as well as any other time to get them back, thegn.’

  Hereward answered, ‘If the truth be told, there may still be my father’s name on documents here. I might still have a claim on some stretch of marsh or mire.’

  The carle laughed and rubbed his hooked nose. He was used to men talking like this; he had been with common soldiers who swore that their fathers had been kings in Ireland, or among the Icelanders.

  He said, ‘I shall believe this when I see it.’

  And Hereward, almost as a jest, replied, ‘And see it you shall, fat one!’

  That night, as the army lay under hedges and in ditches, not daring to light fires lest they were seen, a ragged man with a sparse greyish beard came through the reeds and asked for Hereward. And when he stood before Hereward he said, ‘I come from King Swein. He has sent his ships a different way after all; up the Ouse to Ely. From there he will come in small smacks along the Nene to Peterborough, and will be there by midday tomorrow to take the Abbey. If you are there to share it, good; if not, still good, for then Swein will have all the more for himself, and none to share it.’

  Hereward said, ‘Tell Swein that I will be there at midday tomorrow. And t
ell him that it is not gold or silver I come for, but the other reward he promised me - my wife and son. Tell him that.’

  After he had drunk mead and had eaten barley bread, the man went off along the ditches as silently as a marsh-adder.

  Hereward could hardly sleep that night for thinking of his wife and son. In the morning he was up before any of his men and was armed in his iron helmet and byrnie. As he prowled among the reeds and ditches he tried to remember what Euphemia voice had sounded like; but it was too much for him and he gave it up, lest he should begin to cry before the men.

  By midday the army had reached the Golden Borough, some of them walking up to the waist in ditches, others knee-deep in the slime of the marshes.

  All was so still that to Hereward it seemed God was watching all he did. He passed the word round among his soldiers that they were not to deal too harshly with the monks; but only to lay on if they came against Norman knights or footmen. The men of Lindsey smiled and nodded, and then forgot what he had said, as though the wind that blew across the marsh had taken their minds with it.

  No Normans guarded the long low-roofed monastery which lay before the Abbey. And when Hereward blew on his horn and the rush started, only monks in their hampering robes appeared, holding up crosses and shouting prayers as though they were beset by heathens.

  Hereward called out to them that all was well, and that no harm was meant to them. But the monks were so afraid of the Lindsey men with their knives and axes that they turned and ran howling in all directions like women, or hens when a fox is in the roost.

  One of them, an oxlike man who had been a knight before he came to the Church, rolled up his sleeves and, taking up a log of firewood, struck down three of Hereward’s men. This was the start of a terrible thing. Soon the Lindsey men were hitting out wherever they saw a monk, and soon they were inside the monastery, breaking open coffers and tearing down hangings and relics. But little enough they found there, for the monks had taken the precaution of carrying as much as they could inside the Abbey Church, which had great doors of oak.

  While Hereward was trying to calm his followers, the prior of the place, Ethelwold, ran out and took him by the arm.

  ‘For the love of God,’ said the prior, ‘is this the way to carry on? You are no better than the first Danes who brought such terror to the land.’

  While he was speaking a party of rough men from Axholme broke down the Abbey doors and began to shout with joy at what they saw stacked up inside. Some of them came out with chests of gold and silver, some with holy garments, and some with jewelled shrines. Hereward got to the door in time to beat off a party of young men who were trying to tear down the great rood cross.

  Prior Ethelwold was in tears, and only when Hereward told him that his own father had once held rights on lands at Crow-land, and that, God willing, he would see that all was well, did the prior stop his lamentations.

  Shortly after midday, flames rose up from the houses about the Abbey; and by sunset there was not a dwelling left whole in Peterborough.

  Hereward walked alone, wondering what to do now, praying silently that God would give him the chance to make good this destruction.

  As the sun began to set over the flat marshland the Danish smacks and the rafts came up along the Nene, the men on them laughing loudly to see the smoke rising from the stricken town.

  Hereward ran down to meet them. But Swein was not there, and the captain pushed Hereward aside and called out to the Lindsey men, ‘Right, my comrades, bring the stuff aboard. We will all be off to Ely, where the King stays, and take the news to him. He will see to your rewards.’

  Prior Ethelwold came to Hereward and said, tears on his cheeks, ‘You have betrayed me and God, thegn. You said no harm should befall - yet my monks lie stark in the streets, the houses are all burned, and the treasures of the Borough are being taken away from the place. How will you answer that?’

  Hereward shook his head sadly and said, ‘Father, I had rather have lost my sword-hand than that this should have happened. Believe me, it was none of my wishing. Yet there is this consolation, that between the two of us, you and I, we may still get back some of God’s treasures for the Abbey. And that we should never do if William of Normandy had laid hands on it - for he would have sent it straight to London.’

  Together, Hereward and the prior boarded a raft and went along the Nene with the stacked treasures of the Borough, knee-deep in chalices and vestments, and holding tightly to all the images they could, so that these things did not slip into the muddy waters and be lost among the reeds for ever.

  ‘If only I could recover the arm of the blessed St Oswald, that would be something,’ wept the prior. ‘It lay in a reliquary near the rood cross. I should know the coffer if I ever saw it again, I am sure.’

  By now Hereward was too full of his own grief.

  ‘Keep searching, father,’ he said. ‘Keep searching, and you are bound to find it. As I shall hope to find my family.’

  This only seemed to make the prior weep all the more.

  18. The Fortress at Ely

  That evening Hereward stood in the presence of Swein of Denmark, in a barn on the Isle of Ely, a bare black place, with only a smouldering hearth-fire, and a few rough stools to sit on.

  Swein was with his sons, counting money from the Abbey coffers.

  Hereward stood before him and said, ‘I have done as you asked, God forgive me; now where are my wife and son, Swein?’

  Swein looked up at him as though he could not see Hereward very well, as though he hardly existed. Then he said with a smile that showed his teeth, ‘Would you leave a precious jewel on the roadside, man?’

  Hereward looked puzzled and then said, ‘No, King. Why do you ask?’

  Swein smiled at one of his sons and answered, ‘Yet you would have me bring your precious wife and son out among lawless men into the marshes. Does that make sense?’

  Hereward did not know what to answer. Swein had him in a cleft stick. At last he said, ‘I have waited long to see them, King. I thought you would stand by your bargain.’

  King Swein rose and put on a very stern face. ‘In the presence of my sons,’ he said, ‘are you accusing me of trickery, Hereward?’

  Hereward hardly knew what to say, but he shook his head, although in his heart he mistrusted the Dane.

  King Swein smiled and said, ‘When a man sells a pig to another, does he expect payment that very day? Or, if he is a sensible fellow, might he not be prepared to wait one more week, and receive not only his payment, but the everlasting goodwill of his fellow?’

  Hereward did not try to answer this, but instead turned from the King and said, ‘I shall walk about the Isle and see what fortifications you have built. As for my share of the plunder, it is my wish that it be returned to the Abbey.’

  King Swein bowed his head until Hereward had gone from the barn, and then he said to a servant, ‘If ever there was a fool in England, that man is one. How he has lived so long and not learned more sense, I do not know!’

  Then he and his sons went back to counting their treasures. And a while later, when the Prior Ethelwold broke in and wearingly demanded the holy relic of St Oswald, Swein turned to him carelessly and said, ‘Aye, you shall have it, fellow. And if you are a quiet mouse of a man for another hour, you shall also be a bishop in my kingdom of Denmark. Now be off with you and let me count my gains.’

  Ethelwold went in search of Hereward to tell him this, but he could not find the thegn.

  Indeed, few men could have found him, for he was lying in a ditch, sighting along it and deciding where best to lay a stockade. In his loneliness, he had set his mind to fortifying the Isle of Ely as well as it could be done, against the time when William the Norman came up to seek his revenge for the attack on the Golden Borough.

  The Isle was hardly more than a great mound of solid earth set among waving miles of rush and marshland. All about it water lapped in ditches and channels. Huge flocks of swamp birds lived there, and w
ater-rats by the thousand. At night, in the moonlight, thick grey mists lay heavily over the deserted place. Stumps of rotting trees stood everywhere, relics of a time when forests grew there, now blackened and twisted wrecks, from which hung deep green mosses. No man, unless thief or outlaw, would wish to live in such a place. It was an island of sickening smells, of half-rotted vegetation, of strange night-noises, and of despair.

  Yet there was this consolation, thought Hereward, as he moved from spot to spot, working out where a causeway should be built or a turf wall raised, no horse and no armed man could survive in this morass; only men who came on boats or rafts could reach the island - and they would be seen long before they got within striking range.

  19. Departure and Attack

  Men were working everywhere among the reeds. The June sun caused their clothes to stick to their backs, and after a while, as they knocked in stakes, set up walls of turf, or made pit-falls, the men stripped off their shirts and worked, half-naked, to defend the Isle.

  Hereward worked with the Englishmen, digging deep as anyone; dragging great bundles of faggots to build stockades, or willow-hurdles that would form the base on which mud roads might be made.

  He met King Swein under a clump of damp alders. The Dane was sitting in the crook of a tree, gazing at his image in the water. He hardly noticed Hereward until the Englishman stood above him and their pictures mingled in the shimmering green pool.

  Then Swein turned and said, ‘Our men are building something that will serve a useful purpose, friend.’

  Hereward nodded and asked when he would see Euphemia and Cnut.

  The Danish king smiled and answered, ‘Patience, man, patience. I have something more pressing to speak of. Your English prior, Ethelwold, has been behaving most oddly. Twice we have caught him in the barn, kneeling beside the coffers and praying. And three times we have come on him with a hammer and chisel in his hands. It is not like a priest to use such things, is it?’