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Updated: June 7, 2025
"So be it, Now, here we are at Stamford town; and I must to my trade. Do you like to see fighting, Alftruda, the man's game, the royal game, the only game worth a thought on earth? For you are like to see a little in the next ten minutes." "I should like to see you fight. They tell me none is so swift and terrible in the battle as Hereward.
And he recollected her scoff at Bruges, "So he could not wait for me?" And a storm of evil thoughts swept through him. "Would to heaven!" said he to himself, crushing them gallantly down, "I had never thought of Lincoln. But there is no other plan." But he did not tell Alftruda, as he meant to do, that she might see him soon in Lincoln Castle as its conqueror and lord.
Sir Aswart, Thorold the abbot's man, was not likely to forgive him for turning him out of the three Mainthorpe manors, which he had comfortably held for two years past, and sending him back to lounge in the abbot's hall at Peterborough, without a yard of land he could call his own. Sir Ascelin was not likely to forgive him for marrying Alftruda, whom he had intended to marry himself.
"No, madam," said Alftruda, not adding that she had taken good care that he should not know. "It is the best thing which I have heard of him. I should tell him, were it not that I must not meddle with my lord's plans. God grant him a good delivery, as they say of the poor souls in jail. Well, madam, you have your will at last.
"My way?" said Alftruda, in a bitter and hopeless tone. Hereward mounted her on a good horse, and rode beside her, looking and he well knew it a very perfect knight. Soon they began to talk. What had brought Alftruda to Peterborough, of all places on earth? "A woman's fortune. Because I am rich, and some say fair, I am a puppet, and a slave, a prey. I was going back to my, to Dolfin."
Alftruda might have answered with scorn that she was an Adeliza, and of better English blood than Judith's Norman blood; but she had her ends to gain, and gained them.
Alftruda said that it might be but a countryman's rumor; that, at least, it was shame to quarrel with their guests. At last it was agreed that two knights should gallop on into Bourne, and bring back news. But those knights never came back. So the whole body moved on Bourne, and there they found out the news for themselves.
That was all he said; and as for thinking, he had the posse comitatus of seven counties to think of. But what could those great fortunes and joys be, which Alftruda did not dare to describe? She growing old, too? Impossible, that was woman's vanity. It was but two years since she was as fair as a saint in a window. "She shall not marry Ascelin. I will cut his head off.
However that may be, he stayed in Scotland with one Gilbert of Ghent, at whose house, among other doughty deeds, single-handed he slew a mighty white bear that escaped from captivity, incidentally saving the life of a pretty little maiden named Alftruda, and earning the hatred of the other men, who had not dared to face the bear.
Alftruda was half glad to have him out of the way, lest his now sullen and uncertain temper should break out; and bowed herself to the earth before Judith, who patronized her to her heart's content, and offered her slyly insolent condolences on being married to a barbarian. She herself could sympathize, who more?
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