The next place in which Hereward appeared was far away on the southwest, upon the Cornish shore. How he came there, or after how long, the chronicles do not say. All that shall be told is, that he went into port on board a merchant ship carrying wine, and intending to bring back tin. The merchants had told him of one Alef, a valiant regulus or kinglet of those parts, who was indeed a distant connection of Hereward himself, having married, as did so many of the Celtic princes, the daughter of a Danish sea-rover, of Siward’s blood. They told him also that the kinglet increased his wealth, not only by the sale of tin and of red cattle, but by a certain amount of autumnal piracy in company with his Danish brothers-in-law from Dublin and Waterford; and Hereward, who believed, with most Englishmen of the East Country, that Cornwall still produced a fair crop of giants, some of them with two and even three heads, had hopes that Alef might show him some adventure worthy of his sword. He sailed in, therefore, over a rolling bar, between jagged points of black rock, and up a tide river which wandered away inland, like a land-locked lake, between high green walls of oak and ash, till they saw at the head of the tide Alef’s town, nestling in a glen which sloped towards the southern sun. They discovered, besides, two ships drawn up upon the beach, whose long lines and snake-heads, beside the stoat carved on the beak-head of one and the adder on that of the other, bore witness to the piratical habits of their owner. The merchants, it seemed, were well known to the Cornishmen on shore, and Hereward went up with them unopposed; past the ugly dikes and muddy leats, where Alef’s slaves were streaming the gravel for tin ore; through rich alluvial pastures spotted with red cattle, and up to Alef’s town. Earthworks and stockades surrounded a little church of ancient stone, and a cluster of granite cabins thatched with turf, in which the slaves abode, and in the centre of all a vast stone barn, with low walls and high sloping roof, which contained Alef’s family, treasures, fighting tail, horses, cattle, and pigs. They entered at one end between the pigsties, passed on through the cow-stalls, then through the stables, and saw before them, dim through the reek of thick peat-smoke, a long oaken table, at which sat huge dark-haired Cornishmen, with here and there among them the yellow head of a Norseman, who were Alef’s following or fighting men. Boiled meat was there in plenty, barley cakes, and ale. At the head of the table, on a high-backed settle, was Alef himself, a jolly giant, who was just setting to work to drink himself stupid with mead made from narcotic heather honey. By his side sat a lovely dark-haired girl, with great gold torcs upon her throat and wrists, and a great gold brooch fastening a shawl which had plainly come from the looms of Spain or of the East, and next to her again, feeding her with titbits cut off with his own dagger, and laid on barley cake instead of a plate, sat a more gigantic personage even than Alef, the biggest man that Hereward had ever seen, with high cheek bones, and small ferret eyes, looking out from a greasy mass of bright red hair and beard.
No questions were asked of the new-comers. They set themselves down in silence in empty places, and, according to the laws of the good old Cornish hospitality, were allowed to eat and drink their fill before they spoke a word.
“Welcome here again, friend,” said Alef at last, in good enough Danish, calling the eldest merchant by name. “Do you bring wine?”
The merchant nodded.
“And you want tin?”
The merchant nodded again, and lifting his cup drank Alef’s health, following it up by a coarse joke in Cornish, which raised a laugh all round.
The Norse trader of those days, it must be remembered, was none of the cringing and effeminate chapmen who figure in the stories of the Middle Ages. A free Norse or Dane, himself often of noble blood, he fought as willingly as he bought; and held his own as an equal, whether at the court of a Cornish kinglet or at that of the Great Kaiser of the Greeks.
“And you, fair sir,” said Alef, looking keenly at Hereward, “by what name shall I call you, and what service can I do for you? You look more like an earl’s son than a merchant, and are come here surely for other things besides tin.”
“Health to King Alef,” said Hereward, raising the cup. “Who I am I will tell to none but Alef’s self; but an earl’s son I am, though an outlaw and a rover. My lands are the breadth of my boot-sole. My plough is my sword. My treasure is my good right hand. Nothing I have, and nothing I need, save to serve noble kings and earls, and win me a champion’s fame. If you have battles to fight, tell me, that I may fight them for you. If you have none, thank God for his peace; and let me eat and drink, and go in peace.”
“King Alef needs neither man nor boy to fight his battle as long as Ironhook sits in his hall.”
It was the red-bearded giant who spoke in a broken tongue, part Scotch, part Cornish, part Danish, which Hereward could hardly understand; but that the ogre intended to insult him he understood well enough.
Hereward had hoped to find giants in Cornwall: and behold he had found one at once; though rather, to judge from his looks, a Pictish than a Cornish giant; and, true to his reckless determination to defy and fight every man and beast who was willing to defy and fight him, he turned on his elbow and stared at Ironhook in scorn, meditating some speech which might provoke the hoped-for quarrel.
As he did so his eye happily caught that of the fair Princess. She was watching him with a strange look, admiring, warning, imploring; and when she saw that he noticed her, she laid her finger on her lip in token of silence, crossed herself devoutly, and then laid her finger on her lips again, as if beseeching him to be patient and silent in the name of Him who answered not again.
Hereward, as is well seen, wanted not for quick wit, or for chivalrous feeling. He had observed the rough devotion of the giant to the Lady. He had observed, too, that she shrank from it; that she turned away with loathing when he offered her his own cup, while he answered by a dark and deadly scowl.
Was there an adventure here? Was she in duress either from this Ironhook or from her father, or from both? Did she need Hereward’s help? If so, she was so lovely that he could not refuse it. And on the chance, he swallowed down his high stomach, and answered blandly enough,—
“One could see without eyes, noble sir, that you were worth any ten common men; but as every one has not like you the luck of so lovely a lady by your side, I thought that perchance you might hand over some of your lesser quarrels to one like me, who has not yet seen so much good fighting as yourself, and enjoy yourself in pleasant company at home, as I should surely do in your place.”
The Princess shuddered and turned pale; then looked at Hereward and smiled her thanks. Ironhook laughed a savage laugh.
Hereward’s jest being translated into Cornish for the benefit of the company, was highly approved by all; and good humor being restored, every man got drunk save Hereward, who found the mead too sweet and sickening.
After which those who could go to bed went to bed, not as in England, [Footnote: Cornwall was not then considered part of England.] among the rushes on the floor, but in the bunks or berths of wattle which stood two or three tiers high along the wall.
The next morning as Hereward went out to wash his face and hands in the brook below (he being the only man in the house who did so), Martin Lightfoot followed him.
“What is it, Martin? Hast thou had too much of that sweet mead last night that thou must come out to cool thy head too?”
“I came out for two reasons,—first, to see fair play, in case that Ironhook should come to wash his ugly visage, and find you on all fours over the brook—you understand? And next, to tell you what I heard last night among the maids.”
“And what did you hear?”
“Fine adventures, if we can but compass them. You saw that lady with the carrot-headed fellow?—I saw that you saw. Well, if you will believe me, that man has no more gentle blood than I have,—has no more right to sit on the settle than I. He is a No-man’s son, a Pict from Galloway, who came down with a pirate crew and has made himself the master of this drunken old Prince, and the darling of all his housecarles, and now will needs be his son-in-law whether he will or not.”
“I thought as much,” said Hereward; “but how didst thou find out this?”
“I went out and sat with the knaves and the maids, and listened to their harp-playing, and harp they can, these Cornish, like very elves; and then I, too, sang songs and told them stories, for I can talk their tongue somewhat, till they all blest me for a right good fellow. And then I fell to praising up old Ironhook to the women.”
“Praising him up, man?”
“Ay, just because I suspected him; for the women are so contrary, that if you speak evil of a man they will surely speak good of him; but if you will only speak good of him, then you will hear all the evil of him he ever has done, and more beside. And this I heard; that the King’s daughter cannot abide him, and would as lief marry a seal.”
“One did not need to be told that,” said Hereward, “as long as one has eyes in one’s head. I will kill the fellow, and carry her off, ere four-and-twenty hours be past.”
“Softly, softly, my young master. You need to be told something that your eyes would not tell you, and that is, that the poor lass is betrothed already to a son of old King Ranald the Ostman, of Waterford, son of old King Sigtryg, who ruled there when I was a boy.”
“He is a kinsman of mine, then,” said Hereward. “All the more reason that I should kill this ruffian.”
“If you can,” said Martin Lightfoot.
“If I can?” retorted Hereward, fiercely.
“Well, well, wilful heart must have its way; only take my counsel: speak to the poor young lady first, and see what she will tell you, lest you only make bad worse, and bring down her father and his men on her as well as you.”
Hereward agreed, and resolved to watch his opportunity of speaking to the princess.
As they went in to the morning meal they met Alef. He was in high good humor with Hereward; and all the more so when Hereward told him his name, and how he was the son of Leofric.
“I will warrant you are,” he said, “by the gray head you carry on green shoulders. No discreeter man, they say, in these isles than the old earl.”
“You speak truth, sir,” said Hereward, “though he be no father of mine now; for of Leofric it is said in King Edward’s court, that if a man ask counsel of him, it is as though he had asked it of the oracles of God.”
“Then you are his true son, young man. I saw how you kept the peace with Ironhook, and I owe you thanks for it; for though he is my good friend, and will be my son-in-law erelong, yet a quarrel with him is more than I can abide just now, and I should not like to have seen my guest and my kinsman slain in my house.”
Hereward would have said that he thought there was no fear of that; but he prudently held his tongue, and having an end to gain, listened instead of talking.
“Twenty years ago, of course, I could have thrashed him as easily as—; but now I am getting old and shaky, and the man has been a great help in need. Six kings of these parts has he killed for me, who drove off my cattle, and stopped my tin works, and plundered my monks’ cells too, which is worse, while I was away sailing the seas; and he is a right good fellow at heart, though he be a little rough. So be friends with him as long as you stay here, and if I can do you a service I will.”
They went in to their morning meal, at which Hereward resolved to keep the peace which he longed to break, and therefore, as was to be expected, broke.
For during the meal the fair lady, with no worse intention, perhaps, than that of teasing her tyrant, fell to open praises of Hereward’s fair face and golden hair; and being insulted therefore by the Ironhook, retaliated by observations about his personal appearance, which were more common in the eleventh century than they happily are now. He, to comfort himself, drank deep of the French wine which had just been brought and broached, and then went out into the court-yard, where, in the midst of his admiring fellow-ruffians, he enacted a scene as ludicrous as it was pitiable. All the childish vanity of the savage boiled over. He strutted, he shouted, he tossed about his huge limbs, he called for a harper, and challenged all around to dance, sing, leap, fight, do anything against him: meeting with nothing but admiring silence, he danced himself out of breath, and then began boasting once more of his fights, his cruelties, his butcheries, his impossible escapes and victories; till at last, as luck would have it, he espied Hereward, and poured out a stream of abuse against Englishmen and English courage.
“Englishmen,” he said, “were naught. Had he not slain three of them himself with one blow?”
“Of your mouth, I suppose,” quoth Hereward, who saw that the quarrel must come, and was glad to have it done and over.
“Of my mouth?” roared Ironhook; “of my sword, man!”
“Of your mouth,” said Hereward. “Of your brain were they begotten, of the breath of your mouth they were born, and by the breath of your mouth you can slay them again as often as you choose.”
The joke, as it has been handed down to us by the old chroniclers, seems clumsy enough; but it sent the princess, say they, into shrieks of laughter.
“Were it not that my Lord Alef was here,” shouted Ironhook, “I would kill you out of hand.”
“Promise to fight fair, and do your worst. The more fairly you fight, the more honor you will win,” said Hereward.
Whereupon the two were parted for the while.
Two hours afterwards, Hereward, completely armed with helmet and mail shirt, sword and javelin, hurried across the great court-yard, with Martin Lightfoot at his heels, towards the little church upon the knoll above. The two wild men entered into the cool darkness, and saw before them, by the light of a tiny lamp, the crucifix over the altar, and beneath it that which was then believed to be the body of Him who made heaven and earth. They stopped, trembling, for a moment, bowed themselves before that, to them, perpetual miracle, and then hurried on to a low doorway to the right, inside which dwelt Alef’s chaplain, one of those good Celtic priests who were supposed to represent a Christianity more ancient than, and all but independent of, the then all-absorbing Church of Rome.
The cell was such a one as a convict would now disdain to inhabit. A low lean-to roof; the slates and rafters unceiled; the stone walls and floor unplastered; ill-lighted by a hand-broad window, unglazed, and closed with a shutter at night. A truss of straw and a rug, the priest’s bed, lay in a corner. The only other furniture was a large oak chest, containing the holy vessels and vestments and a few old books. It stood directly under the window for the sake of light, for it served the good priest for both table and chair; and on it he was sitting reading in his book at that minute, the sunshine and the wind streaming in behind his head, doing no good to his rheumatism of thirty years’ standing.
“Is there a priest here?” asked Hereward, hurriedly.
The old man looked up, shook his head, and answered in Cornish.
“Speak to him in Latin, Martin! Maybe he will understand that.”
Martin spoke. “My lord, here, wants a priest to shrive him, and that quickly. He is going to fight the great tyrant Ironhook, as you call him.”
“Ironhook?” answered the priest in good Latin enough. “And he so young! God help him, he is a dead man! What is this,—a fresh soul sent to its account by the hands of that man of Belial? Cannot he entreat him,—can he not make peace, and save his young life? He is but a stripling, and that man, like Goliath of old, a man of war from his youth up.”
“And my master,” said Martin Lightfoot, proudly, “is like young David,—one that can face a giant and kill him; for he has slain, like David, his lion and his bear ere now. At least, he is one that will neither make peace, nor entreat the face of living man. So shrive him quickly, Master Priest, and let him be gone to his work.”
Poor Martin Lightfoot spoke thus bravely only to keep up his spirits and his young lord’s; for, in spite of his confidence in Hereward’s prowess, he had given him up for a lost man: and the tears ran down his rugged cheeks, as the old priest, rising up and seizing Hereward’s two hands in his, besought him, with the passionate and graceful eloquence of his race, to have mercy upon his own youth.
Hereward understood his meaning, though not his words.
“Tell him,” he said to Martin, “that fight I must, and tell him that shrive me he must, and that quickly. Tell him how the fellow met me in the wood below just now, and would have slain me there, unarmed as I was; and how, when I told him it was a shame to strike a naked man, he told me he would give me but one hour’s grace to go back, on the faith of a gentleman, for my armor and weapons, and meet him there again, to die by his hand. So shrive me quick, Sir Priest.”
Hereward knelt down. Martin Lightfoot knelt down by him, and with a trembling voice began to interpret for him.
“What does he say?” asked Hereward, as the priest murmured something to himself.
“He said,” quoth Martin, now fairly blubbering, “that, fair and young as you are, your shrift should be as short and as clean as David’s.”
Hereward was touched. “Anything but that,” said he, smiting on his breast, “Mea culpa,—mea culpa,—mea maxima culpa.”
“Tell him how I robbed my father.”
The priest groaned as Martin did so.
“And how I mocked at my mother, and left her in a rage, without ever a kind word between us. And how I have slain I know not how many men in battle, though that, I trust, need not lay heavily on my soul, seeing that I killed them all in fair fight.”
Again the priest groaned.
“And how I robbed a certain priest of his money and gave it away to my housecarles.”
Here the priest groaned more bitterly still.
“O my son! my son! where hast thou found time to lay all these burdens on thy young soul?”
“It will take less time,” said Martin, bluntly, “for you to take the burdens off again.”
“But I dare not absolve him for robbing a priest. Heaven Help him! He must go to the bishop for that. He is more fit to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem than to battle.”
“He has no time,” quoth Martin, “for bishops or Jerusalem.”
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