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For before all her ladies Adela took her to task for having so long remained unmarried. Then, forming the assembly into a court of love, she asked the ladies what punishment should be meted out. One said one thing, one another. "Marry her to a fool," said Richilda. "Too common a misfortune," said the Lady of France. "No," said she. "We will marry her to the first man who enters the castle."
Richilda had played the heroine, and routed Robert's left wing, taken him prisoner, and sent him off to St. Omer. Men said that she had done it by her enchantments. But her enchantments betrayed her nevertheless. Fitz Osbern, her bridegroom, fell dead. Young Arnoul had two horses killed under him. Then Gerbod smote him to the ground, and Richilda and her troops fled in horror.
He had become tutor of Philip, the young King, and more or less thereby regent of the north of France, and had fulfilled his office wisely and well. He had married his eldest son, Baldwin the Good, to the terrible sorceress Richilda, heiress of Hainault, wherefore the bridegroom was named Baldwin of Mons.
"You marry me to " said she, slowly, with eyes so fierce, and lips so vivid, that Richilda herself quailed. There was a noise of shouting and laughing in the court below, which made all turn and listen. The next moment a serving-man came in, puzzled and inclined to laugh. "May it please your Majesty, here is the strangest adventure.
And after old Baldwin died, and Baldwin of Mons and Richilda came to Bruges, Torfrida was always with her while Hereward was at the wars. "The woman is a manifest and notorious witch," said the secretary. "It seems so indeed," said William, with something like a sigh. And so were Torfrida's early follies visited on her; as all early follies are. "But Hereward, you say, is a good knight and true?"
He had been faithful to Torfrida, a virtue most rare in those days. Few were faithful then, save, it may be, Baldwin of Mons to his tyrant and idol, the sorceress Richilda; and William of Normandy, whatever were his other sins, to his wise and sweet and beautiful Matilda. The stories of his coldness and cruelty to her seem to rest on no foundation.
"I know not why we, countesses and ladies, should have less knowledge of the laws of love than those gayer dames of the South, whose blood runs to judge by her dark hair in the veins of yon fair maid." There was a silence. Torfrida was the most beautiful woman in the room; more beautiful than even Richilda the terrible: and therefore there were few but were glad to see her as it seemed in trouble.
According to Gilbert of Bruges, the two sons of Baldwin were "like powerful wings sustaining him in his flight." The reunion of Hainault and Flanders was, however, destined to be short-lived. Baldwin VI died in 1070, leaving his widow Richilda with two young children; Robert, her brother-in-law, rebelled against her.
Far from hampering William, he allowed a number of his subjects to take an active part in the enterprise. The marriage of Baldwin's eldest son with Richilda of Hainault and of his second son Robert with Gertrude of Holland suggested the possibility of an early unification of Belgium under the counts of Flanders.
And yet in the loneliness and sadness of the forest, she could not put Richilda from before the eyes of her mind. It saddened Hereward likewise. For Richilda he cared little. But that boy. How he had loved him! How he had taught him to ride, and sing, and joust, and handle sword, and all the art of war. How his own rough soul had been the better for that love.
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