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When I saw my friend, thy brother Osbiorn, brought into the camp at Dunsinane with all his wounds in front, I wept a young man's tears, and said, 'There ends the glory of the White-Bear's house! But this day I say, the White-Bear's blood is risen from the grave in Waltheof Siwardsson, who with his single axe kept the gate of York against all the army of the French; and who shall keep against them all England, if he will be as wise as he is brave."
"Let them take the plunder of Peterborough as pay for what they have done, and what beside they would have done if Osbiorn the Earl Nay, men of England, let us be just! what they would have done if there had been heart and wit, one mind and one purpose, in England. The Danes have done their best. They have shown themselves what they are, our blood and kin.
Would you have the curse of all the saints? Stay! I know an old hiding-place. It may be there. Up into the steeple with me." And in a chamber in the steeple they found the golden pall, and treasures countless and wonderful. "We had better keep the knowledge of this to ourselves awhile," said Earl Osbiorn, looking with greedy eyes on a heap of wealth such as he had never beheld before. "Not we!
Did I not send again and again, entreating you to cross from Scheldtmouth to the Wash, and send me word that I might come and raise the Fen-men for you, and then we would all go north together?" "I have heard, ere now," said Earl Osbiorn, haughtily, "that Hereward, though he be a valiant Viking, is more fond of giving advice than of taking it." Hereward was about to answer very fiercely.
It was a hideous scene; but one to which Hereward, as well as Osbiorn, was too well accustomed to see aught in it save an hour's inevitable trouble in getting the men on board. The monks had all fled. Only Leofwin the Long was left, and he lay sick in the infirmary. Whether he was burned therein, or saved by Hereward's men, is not told. And so was the Golden Borough sacked and burnt.
He found the Danes in a dangerous mood, sulky, and disgusted, as they had good right to be. They had gone to the Humber, and found nothing but ruin; the land waste; the French holding both the shores of the Humber; and Osbiorn cowering in Humber-mouth, hardly able to feed his men. They had come to conquer England, and nothing was left for them to conquer, but a few peat-bogs.
Gospatrick and Waltheof's hearts had failed them, and they had retired before the great captain. Florence, of Worcester, says that William bought Earl Osbiorn off, giving him much money, and leave to forage for his fleet along the coast, and that Osbiorn was outlawed on his return to Denmark. Doubtless William would have so done if he could.
"Thou art better than none," said Hereward. "Now, hearken, Osbiorn the Earl. Had Swend been here, I would have put my hand between his, and said in my own name, and that of all the men in Kesteven and the fens, Swend's men we are, to live and die! But now, as it is, I say, for me and them, thy men we are, to live and die, as long as thou art true to us." "True to you I will be," said Osbiorn.
"Be it so," said Hereward. "True we shall be, whatever betide. Now, whither goes Earl Osbiorn, and all his great meinie?" "We purpose to try Dover." "You will not take it. The Frenchman has strengthened it with one of his accursed keeps, and without battering-engines you may sit before it a month."
Then Hereward rose again, and without an openly insulting word, poured forth his scorn and rage upon Osbiorn. Why had he not kept to the agreement which he and Countess Gyda had made with him through Tosti's sons? Why had he wasted time and men from Dover to Norwich, instead of coming straight into the fens, and marching inland to succor Morcar and Edwin?
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