Man With a Sword Page 11

  Hereward said, ‘As I am not a priest, I do not know what a priest is likely to do, Swein. But if you fear that poor Ethelwold means to rob you of your hoard, then set your mind at rest. He could not carry away all you have stolen!’

  Swein glanced up furiously and said, ‘Stolen? That was not stolen, man. I had William’s permission to take it.’

  Then, his sudden anger gone, he stared at Hereward like a boy caught stealing apples.

  Hereward said softly, ‘You are as straight as a hawthorn bough. You are as trustworthy as a moor-viper. Swein of Denmark, there are no men near us to hear, so we can forget who is the king and who the thegn - and I can tell you to your face that you are no comrade of mine from this hour on. When did you speak with the Norman? When did his messengers come to you? Why was I not told?’

  King Swein began to whistle and hum, and to walk round the alder tree so as to put it between Hereward and himself.

  He said at length, ‘In statecraft a man has to make many decisions without noising them abroad. When kings speak to one another, must they do it in the town square, where every rogue and beggar may listen to them?’

  Hereward took up a thick faggot of wood and snapped it over his bent knee. And when Swein left him he went to the alder tree and kicked it again and again in his rage.

  ‘Swein of Denmark, you treacherous hound!’ he was still saying, when he felt a light touch on his shoulder. Prior Ethelwold stood there, his face pale and frightened.

  ‘My son,’ he said, ‘forgive me for disturbing you in your - devotions; but there is something I wish to tell you.’

  Hereward turned, gazing at him as though he had never seen him before. ‘What is it?’

  The prior said gently, ‘I do not know whether I have sinned or not; but I have been in the King’s barn and have found the blessed arm of St Oswald and certain other relics.’

  Hereward smiled then and said, ‘Well, father, that is not so terrible, is it? That is what you wanted.’

  The prior placed his hands together in the motion of prayer before he answered. ‘I have sent them secretly to the Abbey at Ramsey for safe keeping away from the Danes.. ‘.. And I borrowed some of your Englishmen and one of your boats to do it.’

  Hereward began to laugh at the good man’s simplicity. Then he said, ‘Well done, Ethelwold. Do you make me your accomplice in stealing from the Danish king relics which he had no right to?’

  The prior looked at him like an owl and said, ‘I always heard that you were a fierce man, who stood by his comrade, whether Christian or pagan, in all things. I expected to be beaten, or even hanged, for what I have done.’

  Hereward was searching the marshes with his eyes. Suddenly he pointed and said, ‘Look over there, Ethelwold. An adder is about to have that fat frog for his dinner. There, in the clump of dry reeds.’

  The prior did not look, but took Hereward by the arm and said urgently, ‘My son, in your opinion, did I do wrong? After all, King Swein treated me well, and promised me a bishopric if I ever wanted one.’

  Hereward swung on him and said, ‘Swein would promise you the moon and the stars, if he wished to use you for his own ends, father. He has used me, I fear - and now he has been in touch with William the Norman, who has made him a present of all the treasures of your Golden Borough.’

  The prior sat on the damp ground as though he had been hit on the head with a staff, and said, ‘I do not understand. What would William wish to gain by that, my son? What has Swein to give in return?’

  Hereward said slowly, ‘Nothing to give, father; but plenty to take away. With Danes, the taking-away is sometimes of more value than the giving.’

  Prior Ethelwold looked up and said, ‘This is a riddle to me, and I was never good at riddles. What does it mean?’

  Hereward answered, looking over the darkening marsh, ‘Swein has agreed to take away his armies and his ships out of England. That is of more value to William than if he stayed and fought alongside the English, is it not?’

  The prior gasped and said, ‘And the price William has paid for such treachery is our treasure - our treasure?’

  Hereward nodded, and the monk got up and wandered away among the ditches, saying, ‘I cannot believe it! No, I cannot believe it.’

  But three days later he did believe it, when he woke to pray at dawn and saw the last of the Danish smacks and rafts moving laden along the wind-ruffled waterways, away from Ely.

  The prior ran as fast as he could to the wind-break where Hereward slept with other English captains and wakened him.

  ‘My son,’ he said, ‘the Danes have gone, just as you said.’

  Hereward rubbed the sleep from his eyes and smiled. ‘Yes, father,’ he answered. ‘I was up half the night, behind a rock, watching them make ready. This is no surprise to me, but I did think that Swein would have had the good neighbourliness to wish me farewell.’

  The prior sat down beside him and smiled at last. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘saving your presence, I will say what I have always said when Danes have gone: “Good riddance to bad rubbish!”’

  Hereward looked at him strangely, then said, ‘I counsel you to go back to Peterborough, father, and lock yourself in. I hear that your abbot, Thorold the Norman, is back again. You will be safe with him.’

  The prior said, ‘Safe? Safe from what, my son? Am I not safe here?’

  Hereward rolled over as though he meant to sleep again and said, ‘Do as I say, friend. There is nothing to be gained by staying on this island among lawless men. I will give you boats and rowers to take you back to where you belong. Make ready, father, and God go with you.’

  The prior went away, puzzled, until later in the day a darkfaced man wearing a mail shirt down to his knees and a pointed helmet came off a boat and strode into the camp, carrying no weapons. In a proud Norman voice he said, ‘To Hereward, and to all his captains, I bring the King’s word. And this is what

  William of Normandy and England says to you: “Go now, lay down your arms, kneel before your nearest baron, and swear to mend your ways. ”’

  Hereward, who was sitting on a tree-stump eating a piece of salt pork, smiled and said to the man, ‘That was a short speech to come all this way from a king. He could have written it on a parchment and put it in a flask. Then it would have floated along the streams to us one day. So you would have been saved the journey.’

  The Norman knight pushed his helmet back, for it was uncomfortable in the sunshine. Then he said, ‘William’s speeches are all short. He speaks better with a sword than with words. As for that flask - it would have taken too long, and time is short. As for saving me the journey, I have not come very far. The King’s army is stationed only ten miles from here. I thought your spies would have told you that, Hereward.’

  Hereward flung the pork bone away, and said, ‘No, I did not know. Last night it was the turn of the Danes to keep watch, and they left without telling me what they saw.’

  The Norman looked round and said, ‘Is there anyone with a jug of ale? It is a thirsty journey to get here, dressed in this harness, I can tell you.’

  Someone brought the man a drink, and he sat down in the dirt beside Hereward, without asking permission, with his helmet off and his mail shirt unbuckled.

  He was a merry fellow from Dol, red-faced and dark-haired, with two fingers missing from his sword hand. This made it hard for him to hold the ale-cup. But he did not seem to mind spilling the liquid on to his leather tunic. Like most of his folk, he came from the north and was rough and ready.

  Hereward said to him, ‘And what if I do not leave this place?’

  ‘William did not tell me that. I suppose he thought you would do as he said, without question. Everyone else does.’

  Hereward said again, ‘What if we do not leave this place, friend?’

  The knight stood up and handed the ale-cup to the man who had brought it to him. ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘I think that William will come and burn you out - that is, if this damp reed will burn! But if
I were you, thegn, I would do just as the King says. There is little sense in standing before a hurricane or a flood, or any other Act of God.’

  Hereward smiled and asked, ‘So you think of your King as an Act of God, do you, knight?’

  The man shrugged his shoulders and smiled. ‘Of God, or the other one, it matters little; the end is the same!’

  Hereward said in mock sternness, ‘It is well for you that Prior Ethelwold has gone back to Peterborough. He would not allow such heathen talk!’

  The knight put on his helmet again and buckled up his mail shirt. ‘Thegn,’ he said, ‘you and I are soldiers, men of the earth. We know that what is to be will be. If a battle is won, it is won; and if a battle is lost, well, it is lost. No man can undo what has happened.’

  Hereward said grimly, ‘This battle is not lost, my friend. Not yet; no, not yet.’

  The knight went away to his boat quite merrily, stopping every now and then to wave his hand at the Englishmen who worked among the rushes, knocking stakes into the mud, on which they would lay planks to complete a causeway and join the island to the rest of the marsh.

  When he had almost disappeared Hereward called out to the men about him, ‘Well, you have heard King William’s word. He is coming to bum us out if we do not disperse. Many of you have homes and families. It is hard for any man to bear the loss of them. So, here and now, before all witnesses, I pledge my word that any of you who wish to leave Ely may do so, without hindrance, and without hard feelings from me. I have a strange desire to stay, to see what I can gain before I meet my family again. But none of you men need stay.’

  He waited a long time, but no one spoke. The Englishmen stood about him, as still as statues in a church. Not one asked to go home.

  Then a man with a hammer in his hand said, ‘Thegn, we have work to do. The last length of causeway to lay between ourselves and the marsh. Let us be about it!’

  Hereward smiled and shook his head. ‘No, friend,’ he said. ‘Let us leave a gap there for the time being. One day, we might come to bless that stretch of water - who knows? In the meantime, we have our boats and rafts. Let us be content.’

  The men shrugged their shoulders and grinned at each other, but Hereward only smiled and then went away.

  ‘Captains!’ said the man with the hammer. ‘I think they are all madmen!’

  No one disagreed with him.

  20. The Ruined Causeway

  The year which followed began in glory and ended in utter ruin and despair.

  A fortnight after the knight had brought William’s warning five boatloads of Normans came up the waterways at dawn. But the English were awake this time, and had learned to move about the marsh with boards on their feet, like silent frogs. At a dark bend in the channel a group of them risked death by leaping from the rushes and staving in the enemy boats with pick-axes. Then, while the heavily-armed Normans floundered in the mud and slime, other Englishmen picked them off with long-headed arrows that could pierce mail shirts.

  Only three Englishmen were lost that time, but at least forty Normans lay dead among the rushes, some of them sunk so deep into the marsh that they could not be stripped of their mail and swords.

  Hereward smiled grimly over his ale that night, but said, ‘Let us not think we have won yet, friends. The Norman is not a man to take such, a reverse easily. He will be back before long to try again.’

  By noon the next day, when the sun was almost overhead and some of the English were lying about, wiping their brows and playing chess, singing or betting against each other at the game of knuckle-bones, a hail of arrows fell into the camp, doing no harm, but carrying a further threat. Hereward, who was sitting in a tree, called down, ‘They have come along our unfinished causeway - about three hundred of them, all on foot. Poor devils, they must think that we did not know of their arrival. Yet the spies have been passing back the curlew call for an hour or more.’

  A thegn from Riseholme, near Lincoln, called back to him, ‘Blow the horn then, and let our good fellows close in from the marsh.’

  But Hereward shook his head. ‘There is another plan,’ he said. ‘When the horn is blown, no one will close in. We shall sit in the sun, as we do now, and the Normans will perish without your aid!’

  The thegn from Riseholme laughed and said, ‘Very well, Hereward, blow it and let us see what happens.’

  So Hereward put the horn to his lips, as another arrow flight whirred harmlessly through the air, and blew three long blasts.

  The watching English on the island saw that far away the marsh seemed to come alive with men - men with great hammers and baulks of wood. Some of the Normans saw this, too, but they were too late and too far away to prevent what was to happen. The sound of hammers on wood came clearly through the summer air; then came the wrenching and groaning of timber. Suddenly a long piece of the causeway behind the Normans swayed on its pillars, went, over, and sank into the sluggish ooze. The three hundred Normans were left standing on a lonely wooden platform, cut off from land at both ends.

  An Englishman came slopping up out of the swamp, the ash boards still strapped on his feet, and said, ‘What now, Hereward? Are the lads to tumble them down or to fill them with arrows?’

  Hereward climbed out of the tree and said, ‘Nay, Gurth, we will let God’s sun and their armour kill them. Fetch the marsh-otters in and let them break their fast. They carried out their work well.’

  All that day the Normans stood on the length of broken causeway, cursing and shooting arrows. In the heat of the afternoon, many of them stripped off their mail and some of them even flung it into the marsh, in fury.

  At least five of them tried to swim to solid ground, but they either drowned, or were pole-axed by Englishmen in the reeds.

  The rest kneeled to pray, or shouted at the top of their voices for someone to come to their aid.

  Hereward sat alone, wondering what should be done. At any other time he would have been ruthless in destroying his enemy. But, as he sat by the fireside in the barn that had been King Swein’s, the voice of Euphemia seemed to come to him, saying, ‘Have mercy, husband. Have such mercy on these poor devils as you would wish God to have on you, my love.’

  When he could bear his thoughts no longer Hereward rose and went into the dusk to find his captains. One of them was the thegn of Riseholme, who had called up to him earlier when he sat in the tree. Hereward said to them, ‘This is not God’s will, my brothers. We cannot let these men starve out there. To kill swiftly in the heat of battle is one thing; but to stand by while men go mad in the night mist is another. We will push rafts out to them and let them make their own way back to their camp, if God wills it so. Get rafts, my friends.’

  The thegn of Riseholme drew his sword and stuck it in the marshy ground between himself and Hereward.

  ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘here we are all free men. Most of us come from the old Danelaw, and we are not slaves to be sent running this way and that, at the master’s will.’

  Hereward looked down at the thegn’s sword and said, ‘This I know; why do you tell me, Thorkell? And why do you set your sword before me so? It is not a very fine weapon, and I have seen it before.’

  Thorkell dragged his sword from the mud and said, ‘It is not fine, but fine enough. You have seen it before, but you may never see it again - though you may well feel it.’

  Hereward said, ‘All my life I have lived among Northmen. I know their ways, friends. And sometimes I become so weary of their tricks of speech that I would sooner listen to jays chattering, pigs chuntering, oxen bellowing. Yes, friend, I would sooner listen to William and his prinking Norman tongue, at times…’

  Thorkell said angrily, ‘Or your wife and her snarling Greek, I’d guess.’

  Before Hereward knew what he was doing, he had made a fist out of his great right hand and thumped that fist into Thorkell’s neck, just over his neck-ring.

  The thegn’s sword flew out of his hand into the marsh. Thorkell fell on his knees, gasping and holding h
is neck.

  None of the other captains moved, for each knew that Hereward had done right to act as he did.

  Hereward stooped and helped Thorkell up again. ‘I am not sorry, brother,’ he said, ‘for you deserved to be reminded that I am your chosen leader. I am only sad that you should stick against me like that. Tomorrow I will see that you have another sword. Now get the rafts and let us give these Norman dogs a chance to live.’

  But suddenly, in the dark, there came a deep groaning of wood, then a crunching, then a number of splashes. Men were shouting from the mist in foreign voices.

  Thorkell smiled and said, ‘God has answered us. The causeway has collapsed under their weight and they are drowning. Am I still to get out rafts, Hereward?’ Hereward nodded, sterner than ever.

  The Englishmen paddled out on rafts to where the causeway had stood. But now all was silent, and only the scared moorhens clucked in the dark.

  The timbers of the causeway jutted up crazily like the fingers of a black giant in the milk-white mist. Perched on one splintered baulk was a Norman helmet, slung there by its owner when the sun had been too strong for him. It looked foolish and lonely and Hereward took a staff and knocked it off into the water. His face was a mask with no mouth.

  In the morning his men went out and got back nearly two hundred swords and mail-shirts.

  After this, Thorkell never crossed his leader again. He was killed early in August by the bite of an adder, when he was feeling under a clump of dry sedges for a plover’s egg. Hereward was the last man he saw, and as the leader bent over him to wipe his sweating brow, Thorkell said, ‘That blow you gave me, Hereward - I can still feel it! Here, in my neck. You are not a man I would wish to swap buffets with, you old rogue!’

  Then he died, and Hereward was more sorry than he had been for the loss of a battle-mate since Hardrada fell under Landwaster.

  21. The New Enemy

  The year limped slowly enough among the rushes and the stinking water. Men’s clothes wore out and they had to catch what creatures they could to keep themselves from nakedness - rabbits, hares, otters, and wild cats. They laughed to see each other dressed so like savages.