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"They must go," said Hereward, half-peevishly. "Sweyn has right, and Osbiorn too. The game is played out. Sweep the chessmen off the board, as Earl Ulf did by Canute the king." "And lost his life thereby. I shall stand by, and see thee play the last pawn." "And lose thy life equally." "What matter? I heard thee sing,
Martin Lightfoot shook his head, and drew out his knife. "What is that for?" said Hereward. "When the master kills the game, the knave can but skin it. We may sleep warm under this fur in many a cold night by sea and moor." "Nay," said Hereward, laughing; "when the master kills the game he must first carry it home.
As for your valour," he added, "I should be unlucky if I did not think I understand its length and breadth already." The Greek General coloured a little, but replied, with unaltered voice, "True, good Hereward. We have seen each other in battle."
Peterborough had received a new Norman abbot, Turold, "a very stern man," and the entry in the chronicle for 1070 tells how Hereward and his gang, with his Danish backers, thereupon plundered the abbey of its treasures, which were first removed to Ely, and then carried off by the Danish fleet and sunk, lost, or squandered.
A few of the more suspicious, or more desperate, said that they could never trust the Norman; that Hereward himself had warned them again and again of his treachery. That he was now going to do himself what he had laughed at Gospatrick and the rest for doing; what had brought ruin on Edwin and Morcar; what he had again and again prophesied would bring ruin on Waltheof himself ere all was over.
"Nothing easier," quoth Hereward, cheerfully, and held out a leg. But when the man stooped to put on the fetters, he received a kick which sent him staggering. After which he recollected very little, at least in this world. For Hereward cut off his head with his own sword.
Scarcely less immovable was the young Duke of Hereward, the subject of this awful charge, who sat back in his seat with an air of grave curiosity, and with the composure of a man who was master of the situation. But the crowd which filled the court-room seemed utterly confounded by what they heard. Upon the whole, they either disbelieved this witness, or distrusted their own ears.
Not to the coarse women round her; her pride revolted from that thought; and yet she longed for counsel, for sympathy, to open her heart but to one fellow-woman. To go to Crowland was not difficult. It was mid-winter. The dikes were all frozen. Hereward was out foraging in the Lincolnshire wolds. So Torfrida, taking advantage of his absence, proposed another foraging party to Crowland itself.
And after that things waxed even worse and worse, for sixty years and more; all through the reigns of the two Williams, and of Henry Beauclerc, and of Stephen; till men saw visions and portents, and thought that the foul fiend was broken loose on earth. And they whispered oftener and oftener that the soul of Hereward haunted the Bruneswald, where he loved to hunt the dun deer and the roe.
"And now, gallant gentlemen," said Hereward, "we must take new counsel, as our old has failed. Whither shall we go? For stay here, eating up the country, we must not do." "They say that Waltheof is in Lindsay, raising the landsfolk. Let us go and join him." "We can, at least, find what he means to do. There can be no better counsel. Let us march. Only we must keep clear of Lincoln as yet.
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