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There is another spell in the wind, stirred up by devil or witch-wife, and it comes from Tosti Godwinsson." "Tosti, the cold-meat butcher? What has he to say to me?" "This, 'If Hereward will come with me to William of Normandy, and help us against Harold, the perjured, then will William do for him all that Harold would have done, and more beside." "And what answered Torfrida?"
They left the reliquary with the ladies, and went. "See to this good man, Martin." "That will I, as the apple of my eye." And Hereward went into Torfrida's room. "I have news, news!" "So have I." "Harold Hardraade is slain, and Tosti too!" "Where? how?" "Harold Godwinsson slew them by York." "Brother has slain brother?
"And he bowed; and the most magnificent, powerful, and virtuous Godwin would have beckoned him up to sit on the high settle; but he looked straight at the King, as if there were never a Godwin or a Godwinsson on earth, and cried as he stood, "'Justice, my Lord the King! "And at that the King turned pale, and said, 'Who? What? O miserable world! O last days drawing nearer and nearer!
"Now my joy and my life, my hero and my scald I have great news for you, as well as a little baby. News from England." "You, and a baby over and above, are worth all England to me." "But listen: Edward the king is dead!" "Then there is one fool less on earth; and one saint more, I suppose, in heaven." "And Harold Godwinsson is king in his stead.
The world is a fine place and a wide place; and it is a very little corner of it that I have seen yet; and if you were of my mettle, you would come along with me and see it throughout to the four corners of heaven, instead of mixing yourselves up in these paltry little quarrels with which our two families are tearing England in pieces, and being murdered perchance like dogs at last by treachery, as Sweyn Godwinsson murdered Biorn."
"Sweet lips, be still, and let us love instead of plotting." "And this, too you shall not stop my mouth that Harold Godwinsson has sent a letter to you." "Harold Godwinsson is my very good lord," sneered Hereward.
O God that died on cross!" murmured Torfrida, "when will men look to thee, and have mercy on their own souls? But, Hereward, I have news, news more terrible by far. It came an hour ago. I have been dreading your coming back." "Say on. If Harold Hardraade is dead, no worse can happen." "But Harold Godwinsson is dead!" "Dead! Who next? William of Normandy?
When even this warning at first failed to enforce her submission, I swore by all I held sacred in my own world and all she revered in hers by the symbols never lightly invoked, and never, in the course of ages that cover thrice the span of Terrestrial history and tradition, invoked to sanction a lie; symbols more sacred in her eyes than, in those of mediæval Christendom, the gathered relics that appalled the heroic soul of Harold Godwinsson that she should only defeat her own purpose; that I would reclaim my wife before the Order and before the law, thus asserting more clearly than ever the strength of the tie that bound me to her and to her house.
Tosti Godwinsson is in the town at this moment, an outlaw and a wolf's head himself." Hereward laughed a great laugh. "Aha! Every man to his right place at last. Tell me about that, for it will amuse me. I have heard naught of him since he sent the king his Hereford thralls' arms and legs in the pickle-barrels; to show him, he said, that there was plenty of cold meat on his royal demesnes."
England seemed as a corpse, to which all the eagles might gather together; and the South-English, in their utter need, had chosen for their king the ablest, and it may be the justest, man in Britain Earl Harold Godwinsson: himself, like half the upper classes of England then, of the all-dominant Norse blood; for his mother was a Danish princess.
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