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On the other hand, his Duchy of Aquitaine, which included Gascony, Guienne, Poitou, and Saintonge, the Limousin and the Angoumois, Périgord and the counties of Bigorre and Rouergue, was not only restored but freed from its obligations as a French fief and granted in full sovereignty with Ponthieu, Edward's heritage from the second wife of Edward the First, as well as with Guisnes and his new conquest of Calais.
Would he and his men rise and plunder the abbey? Was not the chatelain mad in leaving young Arnulf with him all day? Madder still, in taking him out to battle against the Count of Guisnes? He might be a spy, the avant-courrier of some great invading force.
But Hereward, though the smaller, was the stronger man; and crushing him in his arms, walked on steadily. "Knights, to the rescue! Hoibricht is taken!" shouted they of Guisnes, galloping towards him. "A bear! a bear! To me, Biornssons! To me, Vikings all!" shouted Hereward. And the Danes leapt up, and ran toward him, axe in hand.
One morning early he crossed the frontier and entered the palace at Guisnes while Henry was still in bed, or, as some say, was at breakfast. To the guards at the gate he playfully said, "Surrender your arms, you are all my prisoners; and now conduct me to my brother of England." He accosted Henry with the utmost cordiality, embracing him and saying, in a merry tone,
Whereby there had grown up in the hearts of both the man and the maid a curiosity, which easily became the parent of love. But when Baldwin the great Marquis came to St. Omer, to receive the homage of Eustace of Guisnes, young Arnulf had run into Torfrida's chamber in great anxiety. "Would his grandfather approve of what he had done? Would he allow his new friendship with the unknown?"
At which little Arnulf was as proud as if he had done it himself; and the chatelain sent word to Baldwin that the new-comer was a prudhomme of no common merit; while the heart of the Count of Guisnes became as water; and his knights, both those who were captives and those who were not, complained indignantly of the unchivalrous trick of the Danes, how villanous for men on foot, not only to face knights, but to bring them down to their own standing ground by basely cutting off their horses' heads!
It was in connection with the meetings and intrigues now with one power, now with the other, that the famous meeting with the French King at Guisnes, known as "the Field of the Cloth of Gold," was held in 1520. That the destinies of kingdoms sometimes hang on trifles is curiously exemplified by a singular incident which preceded the famous meeting. Francis I. prided himself on his beard.
A camp of three hundred white tents surrounded a faery palace with gilded posterns and brightly-coloured oriels which rose like a dream from the barren plain of Guisnes, its walls hung with tapestry, its roof embossed with roses, its golden fountain spouting wine over the greensward.
He subsequently repeated the statement, adding that the French king had promised them men and money, and was to attack Calais and Guisnes the moment the rebels were in possession of London. Whether he really withdrew this accusation of Elizabeth on the scaffold must always remain doubtful, the testimony of the sheriffs being in direct contradiction to that of Lord Chandos, who was also present.
Both from the point of view of religion and of politics the French war, in which Mary's husband had succeeded in involving England, proved disastrous. It led to the loss of Calais and Guisnes the last of the English possessions in France, to increased taxation, and to a strong feeling against Mary and all her counsellors.
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