CHAPTER XIX.
THE NORMAN WITCH.
So the Danes and their ships were gone with all that they could carrywith them; and the Saxons of Ely and in the Camp of Refuge, after beingrobbed as well as betrayed, were left to their own devices. Much wasDuke William heartened by the departure of Knut, and the treaty he hadmade with him; and, seeing no enemy in any other part of England, hegave his whole mind to the war in the Fen-country. More knights andadventurers had come over from France and from sundry other countriesto aid the Conqueror in his enterprises, and to seek provision andfortune in unhappy England. Choosing some of the best of these newcomers, and joining them to troops that had been tried in the hardwarfare of the Fen-country, the Son of Robert the Devil by the harlotof Falaise sent strong garrisons to Grantham and Stamford, andPeterborough, and Cam-Bridge; and, carrying with him his chancellor andnearly the whole of his court, he quitted London and went himself toCam-Bridge to direct the war in person. As he and his mighty great hostwere marching through the country towards the river Cam, and as thepoor Saxon people counted the number of the lances, they said,"_Miserere Domine!_ The conquest of our country is complete, and noteven Hereward the Brave will be able longer to defend the Camp ofRefuge!"
When Duke William arrived in the camp at Cam-Bridge, and examined theFen-country which lay before him, he severely censured the folly andrashness of Eustache of Ambleville; and also chiding the impatient andself-confident knights that were now with him and eager to fall on, heswore his terrible oath, by the splendour of God's face, that he wouldnot allow of any fighting until the ancient causeway[202] should berepaired and fortified with towers, and another and a broader causewaycarried across the marshes into the very heart of the fens, andopposite to the point whereon the Saxons had constructed the maindefence of their Camp of Refuge. Timber and stones and baked brickswere brought from all parts of the country, and every Saxon serf thatcould be caught was impressed, and was forced to labour almost untodeath upon works intended for the destruction of his countrymen.Skilful artizans and men experienced in the making of roads and thebuilding of bridges were brought to Cam-Bridge from the city of London,from the city of Caen in Normandie, and from other places beyond theseas; and the task which William had in hand was made the easier by thelong-continued, unwonted dryness of the season. But the Lord of Brunn,although he prayed heartily for rain, did in no wise lose heart; and inproportion as his difficulties increased, his wit and inventionincreased also. The working parties on the roads were constantlycovered and protected by great bodies of troops put under the commandof vigilant officers; but this did not prevent Hereward from stealingthrough the tall, concealing rushes of the fens, and the forests ofwillows and alders, and falling upon the workmen and destroying theirworks. On several occasions he cut the Norman guard to pieces beforethey could form in order of battle; and several times he destroyed in asingle night the labour of many days, levelling the Norman towers withthe ground, breaking up their bridges, and carrying off their timberand their tools and other good spoil. It always happened that when hisenemies were surest he would not come, he came; and when they expectedhim at one given point, he was sure to make an attack upon another anddistant point. At times his ambuscades, surprises, and onslaughts wereso numerous and rapid that he seemed to have the faculty of being inmany places at one and the same time. Many a Norman knight wassurprised at his post, or even carried off from the midst of a camp,and dragged through the rushes and forests at the dead of night, anastounded and helpless captive. Many a time a great body of Normantroops would take to flight and leave all their baggage behind them,upon merely hearing the shout of "Hereward for England!" or those othershouts, "The Lord of Brunn is coming! Fly, ye Norman thieves! Out!out!" Such were Lord Hereward's successes, and such the Norman awe ofhis unforeseen stratagems and unaccountable surprises, that the Normansentirely believed Hereward to be in league with the devil, and to beaided by witches and necromancers and fiends worse than the blubberdevils of Crowland. Now it was true that, for many of his stratagemsand devices, and for many of the sleights and tricks with which heappalled the Normans, Hereward was indebted to the science and travailof that thin, dark man of Salerno and Norman-hater, Girolamo; and, bymeans of deserters from the camp, and by means of ransomed Normans thathad been allowed to quit the camp, the Salernitan, if he had not beenmade well known to the Normans, had been much talked about, and hadbecome the object of so much dread that no knight or man-at-arms evernamed his name without crossing himself. Nor were the Normans longbefore they agreed, one and all, that the dark and silent Salernitanwas Hereward's chief magician, the devil-dealing necromancer to whom hestood indebted for all his successes. Loudly did they raise theirvoices against this supposed wickedness; and yet, when they found thattheir misfortunes and losses went on increasing, they came to theresolution to meet what was no witchcraft at all with real witchcraft,and they told Duke William in Cam-Bridge Castle that he must send overinto Normandie for the most famed witch of that land, where there wasno lack either of witches or of warlocks; and the son of Robert theDevil, whose father, as his name imports, had been liege man toLucifer, sent over to Normandie accordingly to seek for the mostdreaded of Norman witches. Now, whether it was this wickedness that didit, or whether it was that the moist air of the fens and the autumnalseason did not suit Duke William, certain at least it is that he fellsick of a fever and ague, and thereupon took a hurried departure fromCam-Bridge and travelled towards London, having first sent to call fromStamford town Ivo Taille-Bois to take the command of the great army.Now, when Ivo came to Cam-Bridge, and when Duke William was away inLondon, matters went far worse with the Normans than before, for theViscomte was not a great captain, as the Duke assuredly was. Moreover,many of the troops took the ague, and others were so unmanned by theirfears that they could never be made to stand their ground; and, infine, all vowed that they would not venture among the woods andbulrushes, nor attempt any feat of arms whatever until the great witchshould arrive from Normandy to countervail the black arts of theSalernitan and the other wizards and witches they falsely believed tobe employed by the pious Lord of Brunn.
At last a terrible Norman witch[203] arrived at Cam-Bridge, and she wasreceived in the entrenched camp and in the castle with transports ofexceeding great joy. Loathsome and wicked at the same time were it todescribe the person and features, the attire and demeanour, the spellsand incantations of this frightful and detestable portentum. Her yearsfar exceeded the ordinary length of human life, and they had all beenspent in sin and in the practise of infernal arts: in sin and actualdevilry had she been conceived and born, for her mortal father was noneother than that arch-heresiarch and enemy to the saints, Leutarde ofVertus, in the bishopric of Chalons, who went about with asledge-hammer breaking the images of God's saints, and preaching thatGod's prophets had not always prophesied the truth, and that God-livingservants and ministers of the altar had no right to their tithes! Sincethe day when her sire, pursued by his bishop, cast himself headforemost into a deep well and was drowned (for the devils, in theircompact with him, had only agreed that he should never be burned), thisfoul strega, his only daughter, had wandered over the face of the wideearth doing mischief, and dwelling most in those forsaken, accursedparts of the earth where witchcraft does most flourish. It was saidthat she had been as far north as that dread isle which is covered withsnow, and which yet is for ever vomiting smoke and flames; even to thatnorthern isle[204] which pious men believe to be one of the entrancesinto hell, and which has been notoriously inhabited at all times bydevils and devil-worshippers; that she had lived among the Laps, whocall up demons by beat of drum; and that she had dwelt in theOrcades,[205] where the devil's dam and her handmaidens use to raisegreat storms, and to sell wind foul or fair. Of a surety was there nowitch of all that congregated round the witch-tree of Beneventum moreknown than this! It was known, too, how she came by that broken legwhich made her limp in her gait. Once in flying through the
air to thehellish sabbat at Beneventum she came too near to the cross of SaintPeter's Church at Rome, and so fell to the earth.
Ivo Taille-Bois,[206] profane man as he was, would have turned withhorror from the witch, but in his sinful ignorance he believed that thedevil's arts might be employed against the devil, and he saw that allthe soldiery, nay, and all the chivalry put under his command, believedthat without witchcraft they could never cope with the Lord of Brunn,nor make any way in the Fen-country. As for the witch herself, shepromised the men immediate and most marvellous victories. Therefore itwas agreed that she should go forth with the troops and the workingparties and penetrate into the fens, and that she should take herstation on a high wooden tower, and thence give her directions as wellto the working men as to the fighting men. Now Lord Hereward andGirolamo of Salerno, being advised of the arrival of the hag and of theplans of the Normans, took counsel together, and trusted, with the aidof the saints, to break the spell and sortilege, and consume the witchwhile in the very act of her witchcraft. Calling in his merry men fromall their outposts, and posting them behind a river, Lord Herewardallowed the Normans to advance a good way into the fens, and he offeredthem no molestation while they were building a lofty wooden tower inthe midst of an open plain. But when the tower was finished and thewitch was at her incantations, and when the Norman band was gatheredround the foot of the tower in that open plain, Hereward and Girolamo,aided only by Elfric and a few other alert Saxons, came round unseen tothe edge of the plain and set fire to the dense reeds and rushes thatgrew upon it. It is the custom of the fenners to burn their reeds andstubble in the month of November of every year in order to fertilizethe soil with the ashes thereof; and at this season one sees all thismoorish country in a flame, to his great wonder and surprise, if he bea stranger in these parts. It was now the burning-time, and owing tothe exceeding dryness of the summer and of the autumn likewise, thereeds and junci in this plain were all as dry as matches: add to thisthat the Saleritan had brought with him and had sprinkled over theplain some of his marvellous compounds which made a raging andinextinguishable fire, and that the wind was blowing keenly from thenorth-east right across the plain and towards the tall wooden tower,and then it may be, to some degree, imagined, how rapidly and awfullythe flames, once lit, rolled over that broad open field, crackling, andhissing, and then roaring in the wind, while columns of thick, pungent,suffocating smoke rolled after them, darkening the sun and sky andmaking visible the horrible red glare. At the first glimpse of themighty blaze the hag stopped her incantation and let the hell-broth shewas brewing drop from her skinny hands with a hideous yell; and themen-at-arms and the labourers that were gathered at the foot of thetower cast a look of dread and horror to windward and screamed like thewitch, and then took to their heels and ran across the plain in thedesperate hope of keeping before the winds and the flames, and payingno heed to the witch, who had no means of descending from her tower."Ha! ha! thou hag! where is thy witch-tree of Beneventum now, which nomortal axe can cut down or lop, and no earthly fire consume? Ha! witch!where be the broad double channels and the rapid and cool streams ofthe river Calor? If they flowed by thee close as they used to do whenthou wast perched on that witch-tree, high as is thy tower, wouldst notleap headlong into the deep water? Ha! accursed daughter of LeutardIconoclastes, wouldst call upon the saints whose blessed effigies werebroken by thy fathers sledge hammer? What! dost scream and raise thyskinny hands to Heaven? 'Tis vain, 'tis vain! the saints in Heaven willnot hear thee, so down with thy hands towards earth and the fieryplain, and invoke the fiends to whom thou hast sold thy soul. So! so!the fire catcheth and thy tower of wood crackles in the flames, and theflames mount upward and embrace thee round about and lick thee withtheir blistering tongues! Ha! shriek and writhe! these flames give onlya mild foretaste of thine eternal doom. These flames be but fed withdry rushes and fen-grass, and the wood of the oak and pine; but theunquenchable flames of the nethermost pit are fed with brimstone andnaphtha. See! the tower falls and she is consumed, flesh and bones, inthe hissing fire!--and so perish all witches!"
Thus spake Girolamo of Salerno, like the true believer that he was, asthe Norman witch was burning. But the hag did not perish alone; thecrackling fire, carried onward by the strong wind, overtaking andconsuming nearly all the Normans that had advanced with her into theplains to set up her accursed tower. Ivo Taille-Bois, with the rest ofthe Norman host, had stopped at the ford where the witch had crossedbefore she came into the plain; but when he saw the fire kindled androll across the fen almost as rapidly as the waters of a mightycataract, and saw the smoke arise and shut out the sight of the blessedsun, Ivo turned and fled, and every man with him fled in wild dismay,nor stopped until they came to the castle by Cam-Bridge. And the fordwhere the hag crossed over into the plain is called unto this dayWitchford.[207]
And when the fire which Girolamo had lit had burned itself out, and thesmoke had cleared away, the fierce wind fell and there came on aterrible storm of thunder and lightning; and when this was over thelong delayed rains began to fall in torrents, filling the rivers andbrooks and marshpools, and making the whole country once moreimpassable; and these rains, intermitting only for brief hours,continued to fall for seven days and seven nights; and that part of thecauseway which had been built by Duke William's orders was underminedand washed away, so that no trace remained of it. And then, while theNormans remained penned up in the castle and in the intrenched camp,the Lord of Brunn and his Saxons launched their light boats in therivers and meres, and destroyed all the works which had been built todefend the whole road. Thus in the next year the Conqueror hadeverything to begin anew. In the meanwhile Ivo Taille-Bois gave up thecommand in despair, and went away to Stamford, where he had left hiswife, the Ladie Lucia. During the winter this Vicomte of Spalding madean essay to recover possession of the Ladie Lucia's manor-house andestates at Spalding; but as the Saxons had still a little fleet ofbarks and the entire command of the Welland river, Ivo failed entirely,and was not even able to do so much as disturb the tranquillity of thegood Saxon monks of Crowland. And while the Norman vicomte was thusunsuccessful, other and great successes attended the Saxon lord. Withone numerous band collected near his house at Brunn, the Lord Herewardfound his way across the country as far as Newark, where he defeated agreat body of Normans, and found good spoil; and after this, withanother band, drawn mostly from the impenetrable bogs of Hoilandia, heascended the Witham as far as Boston and there surprised and capturedthree Norman knights, and some three-score Norman men-at-arms. And itso chanced that among these three knights was that unlucky wooerGeoffroy, the brother of Ivo, who had found in some upland part ofEngland a Saxon wife and heiress, but one neither so handsome nor sorich as the Ladie Alftrude, for it was a widow quite old enough to beSir Geoffroy's mother, and her whole estate was not much larger thanone of the Ladie Alftrude's farms. Having no money to pay for hisransom, and his brother having none to give or lend him, Geoffroy wassent into the fens and kept there as a close prisoner. And before theLord of Brunn had done, he made other members of that family know whatit was to live among the bulrushes. But now, having done all thesethings, and performed many other exploits, Hereward, at the approach ofspring, brought his fair young spouse from Ely to his house at Brunn,and a very few days after her arrival the lady gave birth[208] to anheir to the united honours of Brunn and Ey. And hereupon followed highrejoicings, and a christening, and such an hospitable feast as onlytrue Saxon lords knew how to give. The good-hearted Lord Abbat ofCrowland baptized the child, and sundry of his monks, and the goodprior of Spalding among them, were bidden to the feast. "Elfric, mytrusty sword-bearer," said the Lord of Brunn when the feast was over,"Elfric, I say, methinks I have given proof, that a man may love andfight, and be a husband and a soldier, at one and the same time, andthat if we are to put off thy espousal day with maid Mildred until thiswar be over, thou wilt run a chance of never being married at all!"
"Good, my Lord," said Elfric, "This is what I have been thinking formor
e than these nine months past."
"Then beshrew me," said the Lord of Brunn, "thou and Mildred shall bemade one before the world be a moon older!"
The Lord of Brunn meant what he said; but Heaven ordered it otherwise.
The Camp of Refuge: A Tale of the Conquest of the Isle of Ely Page 21