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Updated: May 29, 2025
And from her sentence there was no appeal. Married poor Torfrida must be, and to the first man who happened in, be he who he might. And the first man was a ragged beggarman, with whom, when he was introduced into the presence, Torfrida was preparing to deal in her own way with a little knife, be the cost what it might, when she recognised the eye of grey and the eye of blue.
There was silence again. Torfrida looked round her once more, to see whether or not she was dreaming, and whether there was one human being to whom she could appeal. Her mother sat praying and weeping in a corner.
"What is all this about?" They told him as much as they chose to tell him. He was very wroth. "Who was Ivo Taillebois, to add to his message? He had said that Torfrida should not burn." Taillebois was stout; for he had won the secretary over to his side meanwhile. He had said nothing about burning. He had merely supplied an oversight of the king's.
Torfrida's mother began whimpering, and praying to six or seven saints at once. But nobody marked her, possibly not even the saints; being preoccupied with Torfrida. "I hear, fair maid, for that you are that I will do you the justice to confess, that you are old enough to be married this four years since." Torfrida stood like a stone, frightened out of her wits, plentiful as they were.
Drunk I was last night: but not so drunk as to forget a promise." And he rode on, while Torfrida rushed away and broke into wild weeping. On a bench at the door of his high-roofed wooden house sat Dirk Hammerhand, the richest man in Walcheren.
The portress opened, utterly astounded. "Madam?" said Martin eagerly, as Torfrida entered. "What? What?" She seemed to waken from a dream. "God bless thee, thou good and faithful servant"; and she turned again. "Madam? Say!" "What?" "Shall I go back and kill him?" And he held out the little axe. Torfrida snatched it from his grasp with a shriek, and cast it inside the convent door.
And when they were all out of sight, he went back, and lay down on his bed and wept, once and for all. Then he arose, and went down into the hall to abbots and monks, and earls and knights, and was the boldest, cheeriest, wittiest of them all. "They say," quoth he to Torfrida that night, "that some men have gray heads on green shoulders. I have a gray heart in a green body."
She hurried back to Ranald, fearing treason, and foreseeing the effect of the message upon the monks. But what could Ranald do? To find out their counsels was impossible for him, or any man in Ely. For the monks could talk Latin, and the men could not. Torfrida alone knew the sacred tongue. If Torfrida could but listen at the keyhole. Well, all was fair in war.
"I am Martin, Hereward's man, upon my master's business." "What is mine is Hereward's, God bless him," said the man, struggling into a garment, and hurrying out to the shed. "There is a ghost against the gate!" cried he, recoiling. "That is my matter, not yours. Get me a horse to put the ghost upon." Torfrida lay against the gate-post, exhausted now; but quite unable to think.
And he set his teeth, and could not prevent stamping on the ground, in evident passion. There was a tone, too, of deep disappointment in his voice, which made Torfrida look keenly at him. Why should Hereward's nephew feel so deeply about that favor? And as she looked, could that man be the youth Siward? Young he was, but surely thirty years old at least.
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