Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 28, 2025
I owe him more than one grudge, though all in fair quarrel; and one, at least, which can only be wiped out in blood." "Eh! What?" Ascelin hesitated. "Tell me, sir!" thundered William, "unless you have aught to be ashamed of." "It is no shame, as far as I know, to confess that I was once a suitor, as were all knights for miles round, for the hand of the once peerless Torfrida.
"That must be Gilbert of Ghent, and Oger the Breton. No! Gilbert is not coming, Sir Ascelin is coming for him. Holland? That is my friend Ivo Taillebois. Well, we shall have the chance of paying off old scores. Northampton? The earl thereof just now is the pious and loyal Waltheof, as he is of Huntingdon and Cambridge.
And they rode gaily through the greenwood, where presently they found Hereward, to their sorrow, for of their number some returned home only after payment of ransom, and others never returned at all. And of the former were Abbot Thorold and Ascelin; and the ransom that Hereward exacted for those two was thirty thousand silver marks. Whereby Hereward was enabled to put a spoke in Ascelin's wheel.
"I will make sure," said Ascelin, as he struck off the once fair and golden head. "Ho, Breton," cried Ivo, "the villain is dead. Get up, man, and see for yourself. What ails him?" But when they lifted up Raoul de Dol his brains were running down his face; and all men stood astonished at that last mighty stroke.
And the monks had warned off Ascelin, saying that the man was mad, and had Berserk fits of superhuman strength and rage. "He will give it me!" said Torfrida, and went out. "Look at that gable, foolish head," said the madman. "Ten years agone, you and I took down from thence another head. O foolish head, to get yourself at last up into that same place!
Torfrida smiled, and fixed her snake's eye upon her wretched rival. "Out! woman, and choose thee a new husband among these French gallants, ere I blast thee from head to foot with the leprosy of Naaman the Syrian." Alftruda shuddered, and fled shrieking into an inner room. "Now, knights, give me that which hangs outside." Ascelin hurried out, glad to escape. In a minute he returned.
To which message Sir Ascelin and Ivo Taillebois, not being over desirous of having Hereward as a neighbour, saw fit to add a clause exempting Torfrida from the amnesty, but that she should be burnt on account of her abominable and notorious sorceries. When the proclamation arrived, Hereward was away foraging.
Alftruda's warning was both timely and true, for anon came Ivo Taillebois, who had taken to wife Hereward's niece Lucia, and Abbot Thorold, of Peterborough, who had an old score to wipe off in connection with Hereward's last visit to his abbey, and Sir Ascelin, his nephew, and many another.
The knights drew their lances from that terrible corpse slowly and with caution, as men who have felled a bear, yet dare not step within reach of the seemingly lifeless paw. "The dog died hard," said Ivo. "Lucky for us that Sir Ascelin had news of his knights being gone to Crowland. If he had had them to back him, we had not done this deed to-day."
Ascelin had been mentioned, he remarked, three or four times in the letter, which was long, as from one lingering over the paper, wishing to say more than she dared. At the end was a hint of the reason: "O, that having saved me twice, you could save me once more.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking