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Then the girl insisted, prayed, at last commanded them to take her to Crowland. And to Crowland they came. Leofric left the girl at the nun's house door, and went into the monastery, where he had friends enow, runaway and renegade as he was. As he came into the great court, whom should he meet but Martin Lightfoot, in a lay brother's frock. "Aha? And are you come home likewise?
Then came a message from Thetford that the widowed queen, Ethelbert's mother, would speak with him, and without delay he went to her. Offa had left her in peace in her own house; but now she would go to Crowland, that she might be with her who should have been her daughter, and thither Sighard took her. Then he went to see what had happened with his own place, and found it untouched.
But he did not draw it; for he thought he saw overhead a cloud which was very like the figure of St. Guthlac in Crowland window, and an awe fell upon him from above. So they came to Crowland; and Hereward landed and beat upon the gates, and spoke high words. But the monks did not open the gates for a while.
After which Hereward sent them all home except two; and waited till he should marry Alftruda, and get back his heritage. "And when that happens," said William, "why should we not have two weddings, beausire, as well as one? I hear that you have in Crowland a fair daughter, and marriageable." Hereward bowed.
Yet even then there was another side to the picture; and Thorney, Ramsey, or Crowland would have seemed, for nine months every year, sad places enough to us comfortable folk of the nineteenth century.
At last they came to Crowland minster, a vast range of high-peaked buildings, founded on piles of oak and hazel driven into the fen, itself built almost entirely of timber from the Bruneswold; barns, granaries, stables, workshops, stranger's hall, fit for the boundless hospitality of Crowland, infirmary, refectory, dormitory, library, abbot's lodgings, cloisters; and above, the great minster towering up, a steep pile, half wood, half stone, with narrow round-headed windows and leaden roofs; and above all the great wooden tower, from which, on high days, chimed out the melody of the seven famous bells, which had not their like in English land.
And so to Bourne went Hereward by night, and burst in upon the Frenchmen during a drunken carouse: in the morning there were fifteen heads upon the gable to replace the one that he had taken down overnight. Forthwith he returned to Flanders, having bestowed his mother in safety at Crowland Abbey, with a promise to his countrymen of the Fens that he would return to aid them shortly.
This night has made Hereward a new man. Now, prepare" and she knew what he meant "and gather all your treasures; and we will start for Crowland to-morrow afternoon." A wild night was that in Bourne. All the folk, free and unfree, man and woman, out on the streets, asking the meaning of those terrible shrieks, followed by a more terrible silence.
So there the good man, the beginner of the good work of centuries, sat looking out over the fen, and listening to the music which came on the southern breeze above the low of the kine, and the clang of the wild-fowl settling down to rest from the bells of Crowland minster far away. They were not the same bells which tolled for Hereward and Torfrida.
When the walls of Crowland dare not shelter the wronged woman, fleeing from man's treason to God's faithfulness, then let the roofs of Crowland burn till the flame reaches heaven, for a sign that the children of God are as false as the children of this world, and break their faith like any belted knight." Hereward was silenced. His men shrunk back from him.
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