Hereward, the Last of the English Part 25

All her anger was melted away. She cried; she blamed herself. He would be killed; his blood would be on her head. She would have carried it back to him with her own hands; she would have entreated him on her knees to take it back. But how face the courtiers? and how find him? Very probably, too, he was by that time hopelessly drunk. And at that thought she drew herself into herself, and trying to harden her heart again, went to bed, but not to sleep; and bitterly she cried as she thought over the old hag's croon:--

"Quick joy, long pain, You will take your gift again."

It might have been five o'clock the next morning when the clarion rang down the street. She sprang up and drest herself quickly; but never more carefully or gayly. She heard the tramp of horse-hoofs. He was moving a-field early, indeed. Should she go to the window to bid him farewell?

Should she hide herself in just anger?

She looked out stealthily through the blind of the little window in the gable. There rode down the street Robert le Frison in full armor, and behind him, knight after knight, a wall of s.h.i.+ning steel. But by his side rode one bare-headed, his long yellow curls floating over his shoulders.

His boots had golden spurs, a gilt belt held up his sword; but his only dress was a silk s.h.i.+rt and silk hose. He laughed and sang, and made his horse caracol, and tossed his lance in the air, and caught it by the point, like Taillefer at Hastings, as he pa.s.sed under the window.

She threw open the blind, careless of all appearances. She would have called to him: but the words choked her; and what should she say?

He looked up boldly, and smiled.

"Farewell, fair lady mine. 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.

CHAPTER XIII.

HOW HEREWARD WON MARE SWALLOW.

On a bench at the door of his high-roofed wooden house sat Dirk Hammerhand, the richest man in Walcheren. From within the house sounded the pleasant noise of slave-women, grinding and chatting at the handquern; from without, the pleasant noise of geese and fowls without number. And as he sat and drank his ale, and watched the herd of horses in the fen, he thought himself a happy man, and thanked his Odin and Thor that owing to his princely supplies of horses to Countess Gertrude, Robert the Frison and his Christian Franks had not harried him to the bare walls, as they would probably do ere all was over.

As he looked at the horses, some half-mile off, he saw a strange stir among them. They began whinnying and pawing round a four-footed thing in the midst, which might be a badger, or a wolf,--though both were very uncommon in that pleasant isle of Walcheren; but which plainly had no business there. Whereon he took up a mighty staff, and strode over the fen to see.

He found neither wolf nor badger; but to his exceeding surprise, a long lean man, clothed in ragged horse-skins, whinnying and neighing exactly like a horse, and then stooping to eat gra.s.s like one. He advanced to do the first thing which came into his head, namely to break the man's back with his staff, and ask him afterwards who he might be. But ere he could strike, the man or horse kicked up with his hind legs in his face, and then springing on to the said hind legs ran away with extraordinary swiftness some fifty yards; and then went down on all-fours and began grazing again.

"Beest thou man or devil?" cried Dirk, somewhat frightened.

The thing looked up. The face at least was human.

"Art thou a Christian man?" asked it in bad Frisian, intermixed with snorts and neighs.

"What's that to thee?" growled Dirk; and began to wish a little that he was one, having heard that the sign of the cross was of great virtue in driving away fiends.

"Thou art not Christian. Thou believest in Thor and Odin? Then there is hope,"

"Hope of what?" Dirk was growing more and more frightened.

"Of her, my sister! Ah, my sister, can it be that I shall find thee at last, after ten thousand miles, and thirty years of woeful wandering?"

"I have no man's sister here. At least, my wife's brother was killed--"

"I speak not of a sister in a woman's shape. Mine, alas!--O woeful prince, O more woeful princess!--eats the herb of the field somewhere in the shape of a mare, as ugly as she was once beautiful, but swifter than the swallow on the wing."

"I've none such here," quoth Dirk, thoroughly frightened, and glancing uneasily at mare Swallow.

"You have not? Alas, wretched me! It was prophesied to me, by the witch, that I should find her in the field of one who wors.h.i.+pped the old G.o.ds; for had she come across a holy priest, she had been a woman again, long ago. Whither must I wander afres.h.!.+" And the thing began weeping bitterly, and then ate more gra.s.s.

"I--that is--thou poor miserable creature," said Dirk, half pitying, half wis.h.i.+ng to turn the subject, "leave off making a beast of thyself awhile, and tell me who thou art."

"I have made no beast of myself, most n.o.ble Earl of the Frisians, for so you doubtless are. I was made a beast of,--a horse of, by an enchanter of a certain land, and my sister a mare."

"Thou dost not say so!" quoth Dirk, who considered such an event quite possible.

"I was a prince of the county of Alboronia, which lies between Cathay and the Mountains of the Moon, as fair once as I am foul now, and only less fair than my lost sister; and, by the enchantments of a cruel magician, we became what we are."

"But thou art not a horse, at all events?"

"Am I not? Thou knowest, then, more of me than I do of myself,"--and it ate more gra.s.s. "But hear the rest of my story. My hapless sister was sold away, with me, to a merchant; but I, breaking loose from him, fled until I bathed in a magic fountain. At once I recovered my man's shape, and was rejoicing therein, when out of the fountain rose a fairy more beautiful than an elf, and smiled upon me with love.

"She asked me my story, and I told it. And when it was told, 'Wretch!' she cried, 'and coward, who hast deserted thy sister in her need. I would have loved thee, and made thee immortal as myself; but now thou shalt wander, ugly, and eating gra.s.s, clothed in the horse-hide which has just dropped from thy limbs, till thou shalt find thy sister, and bring her to bathe, like thee, in this magic well.'"

"All good spirits help us! And you are really a prince?"

"As surely," cried the thing, with a voice of sudden rapture, "as that mare is my sister"; and he rushed at mare Swallow. "I see, I see, my mother's eyes, my father's nose--"

"He must have been a chuckle-headed king that, then," grinned Dirk to himself. "The mare's nose is as big as a buck-basket. But how can she be a princess, man,--prince, I mean? she has a foal running by her here."

"A foal?" said the thing, solemnly. "Let me behold it. Alas, alas, my sister! Thy tyrant's threat has come true, that thou shouldst be his bride whether thou wouldst or not. I see, I see in the features of thy son his hated lineaments."

"Why he must be as like a horse, then, as your father. But this will not do, Master Horse-man; I know that foal's pedigree better than I do my own."

"Man, man, simple, though honest! Hast thou never heard of the skill of the enchanter of the East? How they transform their victims at night back again into human shape, and by day into the shape of beasts again?"

"Yes--well--I know that--"

"And do you not see how you are deluded? Every night, doubt not, that mare and foal take their human shape again; and every night, perhaps, that foul enchanter visits in your fen, perhaps in your very stable, his wretched and perhaps unwilling bride."

"An enchanter in my stable? That is an ugly guest. But no. I've been into the stables fifty times, to see if that mare was safe. Mare was mare, and colt was colt, Mr. Prince, if I have eyes to see."

"And what are eyes against enchantments? The moment you opened the door, the spell was cast over them again. You ought to thank your stars that no worse has happened yet; that the enchanter, in fleeing, has not wrung your neck as he went out, or cast a spell on you, which will fire your barns, lame your geese, give your fowls the pip, your horses the glanders, your cattle the murrain, your children the St. Vitus' dance, your wife the creeping palsy, and yourself the chalk-stones in all your fingers."

"The Lord have mercy on me! If the half of this be true, I will turn Christian. I will send for a priest, and be baptized to-morrow!"

"O my sister, my sister! Dost thou not know me? Dost thou answer my caresses with kicks? Or is thy heart, as well as thy body, so enchained by that cruel necromancer, that thou preferest to be his, and scornest thine own salvation, leaving me to eat gra.s.s till I die?"

"I say, Prince,--I say,--What would you have a man to do? I bought the mare honestly, and I have kept her well. She can't say aught against me on that score. And whether she be princess or not, I'm loath to part with her."

"Keep her then, and keep with her the curse of all the saints and angels.

Look down, ye holy saints" (and the thing poured out a long string of saints' names), "and avenge this catholic princess, kept in b.e.s.t.i.a.l durance by an unbaptized heathen! May his--"

"Don't! don't!" roared Dirk. "And don't look at me like that" (for he feared the evil eye), "or I'll brain you with my staff!"