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"Or thou wilt go, whither Edwin is gone, to betrayal and ruin." "Why so? He has been kind enough to Waltheof and Gospatrick, why not to Edwin?" "Because," laughed Hereward, "he wanted Waltheof, and he does not want you and Edwin. He can keep Mercia quiet without your help. Northumbria and the Fens he cannot without Waltheof's.
"I am glad," said Waltheof, as they rode along, "that you called this my earldom. I hold it to be mine of course, in right of my father; but the landsfolks, you know, gave it to your nephew Morcar." "I care not to whom it is given. I care for the man who is on it, to raise these landsfolk and make them fight. You are here: therefore you are earl." "Yes, the powers that be are ordained by God."
And thus, like the Romans, from whom he derived both his strategy and his civilization, he "made a solitude and called it peace." He did not give away Waltheof's lands; and only part of Gospatrick's. He wanted Gospatrick; he loved Waltheof, and wanted him likewise.
And at Holbeach, and at Spalding, Hereward split up the war-arrow, and sent it through Kesteven, and south into the Cambridge fens, calling on all men to arm and come to him at Bourne, in the name of Waltheof and Morcar the earls. And at every farm and town he blew the war-horn, and summoned every man who could bear arms to be ready, against the coming of the Danish host from Norwich.
The Earl Waltheof killed, with his own battle-axe, twenty Normans in their flight, and, chasing a hundred more into the woody marshes, took advantage of the dry season, like our friends at Aescendune, and burned them all with the wood. All over England the struggle spread. Hereward took the command at the Camp of Refuge, in the Isle of Ely, and crippled the Normans around.
And now, while we seek in vain beneath the open sky for the rifled tombs of Harold and of Waltheof, a stone beneath the vault of Saint Stephen's still tells us where the bones of William once lay but where they lie no longer. There is no need to doubt the striking details of the death and burial of the Conqueror.
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.
After which Ingulf who had never seen Waltheof in life, discovered that it was none other than he whom he had seen in a vision at Fontenelle, as an earl most gorgeously arrayed, with a torc of gold about his neck, and with him an abbot, two bishops, and two saints, the two former being Usfran and Ausbert, the abbots, St. Wandresigil of Fontenelle, and the two saints, of course St. Guthlac and St.
And if Eadgar thought at all, he may have seen a rival in Henry, while he assuredly could not have seen one in Robert. Anyhow the Ætheling who had marched on York with Waltheof and Mærleswegen now marched on Tinchebray with William of Mortain and Robert of Bellême.
To deprive Waltheof of his earldom might doubtless be prudent; a man who had even listened to traitors might be deemed unfit for such a trust. It might be wise to keep him safe under the King's eye, like Edwin, Morkere, and Edgar. But why should he be picked out for death, when the far more guilty Roger was allowed to live?
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