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It proceeded slowly, partly because of the expense and difficulty of putting up lasting embarkments, and partly because of the opposition of the fenmen, or dwellers in the marshy districts, whose livelihood was obtained by catching the fish and water fowl that the improvements would drive away.
Soon after daybreak next morning the headman came into the hut he had placed at the disposal of Aska and Beric with news that two of the Fenmen had arrived. They at once went out and found that the two men had just laid down their loads, which were so heavy that Beric wondered they could possibly have been carried by them.
Just as evening was falling on the following day they heard shouts. "Are you alive?" a voice, which Beric recognized as that of his boatman, shouted. "Yes," he exclaimed, "alive and well. There is nothing to be afraid of here." A few minutes later the twenty boats again came up. The Fenmen this time ventured to land, but Beric's boatman questioned him anxiously about the monsters.
The women of the hamlets round bring here the cloth they have woven to exchange it for their goods, others from beyond them do the same, so that from all this part of the district goods are brought in here, while the fish and baskets of the Fenmen go far and wide."
A bad prospect for us, if you are," said Hereward to himself. "Ah, my dear Lord King!" said Waltheof, "and you are recovering?" "Somewhat," said the lad, sitting up, "under the care of this kind knight." "He is a monk, Sir Atheling, and not a knight," said Hereward. "Our fenmen can wear a mail-shirt as easily as a frock, and handle a twybill as neatly as a breviary." Waltheof shook his head.
"You could have a score for every one of these," he said; "they are of no value to the men now, and indeed their possession would bring certain death upon any one wearing them did he fall into the hands of the Romans." Beric returned to the Fenmen. "Here," he said, "are some presents for your chiefs, tell them that we have many more like them." The men took them with an air of indifference.
Even did we slay all this tribe here, the Fenmen in the north would seek to avenge their kinsmen, and would invite the Romans to their aid. No, we must speak the Fenmen fair, avoid all cause of quarrel, do all we can to win their goodwill, and show them that they have nothing to fear from us. Still, we must always be on guard against treachery.
"What! Did you want her yourself? On my honor I knew not of it. But have patience. You shall have her yet, and all her lands, if you will hear my counsel, and keep it." "But you would give her to Hereward!" "And to you too. It is a poor bait, say these frogs of fenmen, that will not take two pike running. Listen to me. I must kill this Hereward. I hate him.
We would cut them off amid the peat bogs, or they would founder therein, and sink under the weight of armour. Then they tried to force some fenmen they caught to guide them to us at Othery.
"You know that we have legends among ourselves, which we learned from the natives who were here before we came, that at one time strange creatures wandered over the country; but if there were such creatures they died long ago. These Fenmen have a story among themselves that such beasts lived in the heart of the swamp here when they first fled before us.
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