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The spring and summer had passed, and the autumn was almost over, when great news came to the Court of Bruges, where Torfrida was now a bower-maiden. The Hollanders had been beaten till they submitted; at least for the present.
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.
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.
"Robyn loved our dere Ladye, For doubt of dedely synne, Wolde he never do company harme That any woman was ynne." And even so it was with Hereward in the Bruneswald, if the old chroniclers, Leofric especially, are to be believed. And now Torfrida was astonished. She had given way utterly at Ely, from woman's fear, and woman's disappointment. All was over. All was lost. What was left, save to die?
"If William's French grooms got hold of you, Torfrida, it would not be a little walnut brown which would hide you," said Hereward. "It is like you to offer, worthy of you, who have no peer." "That she has not," quoth churchmen and soldiers alike. "But to send you would be to send Hereward's wrong half. The right half of Hereward is going; and that is, himself."
Do you think that in the face of coming to England and fighting here, and plotting here, and being, may be, an earl's countess, I have not made Martin Lightfoot teach me your English tongue, till I can speak it as well as you? I kept that hidden as a surprise for you, that you might find out, when you most needed, how Torfrida loved you." "As if I had not found out already! O woman! woman!
O, if Torfrida has been true to you, promise me this day that you will be true men to her and hers; that if which Heaven forbid! aught should befall him and me, you will protect this my poor old mother, and this my child, who has grown up among you all, a lamb brought up within the lions' den.
And after old Baldwin died, and Baldwin of Mons and Richilda came to Bruges, Torfrida was always with her while Hereward was at the wars. "The woman is a manifest and notorious witch," said the secretary. "It seems so indeed," said William, with something like a sigh. And so were Torfrida's early follies visited on her; as all early follies are. "But Hereward, you say, is a good knight and true?"
"You would have saved England, my hero!" and Torfrida believed her own words. "I don't say that. Besides, I say that England is not lost.
William waited for the rising of the tide; and when the tide was near its height, he commanded the artillery to open, and clear the fort opposite of the English. Then with crash and twang, the balistas and catapults went off, and great stones and heavy lances hurtled through the air. "Back!" shouted Torfrida, raised almost to madness, by fasting, self-torture, and religious frenzy.
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