The Camp of Refuge: A Tale of the Conquest of the Isle of Ely

by Charles MacFarlane

  CHAPTER XXVII.

  HEREWARD STILL FIGHTS.

  At the return of spring, Duke William being at Warwick Castle,[254] onthe pleasant river Avon, gave forth his mandate for the collecting of agreat army to proceed against the Lord of Brunn. Much had it vexed andgrieved his proud soul that Hereward should have escaped from the Campof Refuge in the Isle of Ely, and have made his name terrible in otherparts: for, during the winter, Peterborough and Stamford--aye, Granthamand Newark--had heard the war-cry of the Lord of Brunn, and the Normansthere had been plundered by his band; and further still, whereNottingham looks down upon Trent, Hereward had carried his successfulforay. "By the splendour," quoth Duke William, as he thought upon thosethings, "I would give back all the Saxon lives that were taken near Elyfor the life of this one man, who hath more power of mischief in himthan all the Saxons put together. Or I would give to him the broadestearldom in all England if he would but submit and be my liege-man! Ineed such a soldier, for the men that followed me from Normandie arebecome all rich in this fat land, and risk not themselves in battle asthey used to do when their fortunes were to make by sword and lance.This shall be thought of again, albeit my half-brother Odo and all myNormans have vowed the death of that terrible Lord of Brunn, and thinkthat every hide of land left to a Saxon is so much robbed from them."

  During the spring months another mighty host was collected from out ofthe several shires of Huntingdon, Cam-Bridge, Leicester, Nottingham,Derby, Warwick, and others; and viscomtes and comtes, and knights ofgreat fame and long experience in war, were placed in command, and wereordered to encompass the Lord of Brunn, and make an end of him or ofhis resistance. No stores were spared; nothing was spared that wasthought likely to forward the one great object. Scarcely had Williammade a greater array of strength when he first landed at Pevensey, tomarch against King Harold at Hastings.

  But Hereward, that cunning captain and excellent soldier, _inclytusmiles_, was not idle during this season: he went hither and thitherthroughout the country on the Wash and the whole fen country, callingupon the fenners to be steady and true to him and their native land;and to get their bows and arrows ready, and to sharpen such swords andaxes, or bill-hooks and spear-heads, as they might have; and to be everin a state of readiness to fight, if fighting could stead them, or toretreat with their cattle into the inaccessible places and thelabyrinths among the waters and the meres. And the wandering menestrelsand gleemen, who had been driven hitherward from all other parts ofEngland, with Elfric, who was as good a gleemen as any of the number,went from one township in the fens to another, singing the Saxon songswhich did honour to the Lord of Brunn, and told how often he hadprevailed in fight over the Norman invaders. And at the sound of thesesongs the fenners gave up their peaceful occupations and prepared forwar; while many hundreds went at once to join the standard of the Lordof Brunn. The men of Hoiland mounted themselves on their tall stilts,and came wading across marsh and mere unto the manor-house of Spalding;others came thither in their light skerries; others came on foot, withtheir fen-poles in their hands, leaping such waters and drains as couldbe leaped, and swimming across the rest like the water-fowls of thefens. Loud blew the Saxon horn everywhere: the monks of Ely could hearit in their cells by night, and their guests the Norman warriors, whoventured not to come forth beyond Hadenham or Turbutsey, could hear itin the hall or refectory by day. The country seemed all alive andstirring, and full of strange sights: but the strangest sight of allwas that of the men from the shores of the Wash marching in troops ontheir high stilts, carrying their bows and quivers and swords and pikesat their backs, and looking, at a distance, with their long woodenshanks and their bodies propped in the air, like troops of giant cranesor herons. And ever as they went, and whether they went upon stilts orupon their own feet, or in flitting skerries, or in heavier and slowerboats, these brave fenners sung in chorus the good songs which they hadlearned from the gleemen. In this wise the Lord of Brunn had a greatforce collected and in arms by the time of summer, when the waters hadabated and the green fields were showing themselves, and the Normanswere beginning to march, in the fantastic hope of encircling Herewardas hunters gird in a beast of prey. There were no traitors here, as atEly, to show the short and safe ways across the fens; and IvoTaille-Bois, the only Norman chief that could be said to know a littleof the wild and difficult country, was a close prisoner in the house atSpalding, where he tried to beguile the tedium of his captivity byplaying almost constantly at dice with the two Norman knights who hadbeen captured with him in the marsh. Add to all this that the Normans,who had not before tried what it was to make war in the fens, had acontempt of their enemy, and a measureless confidence in their ownskill and prowess, and it will be understood that their discomfiturewas unavoidable. They came down from the upland country in separatebodies, and towards points far apart; and before they could placethemselves, or contract their intended circle and give the hand to oneanother, Hereward attacked them separately, and beat them one by one.Nor did the Normans fare much better when they gave up their plan ofcircle and united their forces in one head. The Lord of Brunn, who hadcounted upon being driven from Spalding into the wilderness, found notonly that he could maintain himself there, but that he could also holdhis own good house at Brunn; for, when the Norman host marched uponthat manor, they fell into an ambuscade he had laid for them, andsuffered both loss and shame, and then fled from an enemy they hadhardly seen; for the fenners had willow-trees for their shields, orthey had bent their bows in the midst of the tall growing rushes. Thuspassed the summer months; and Duke William[255] was still on thenorthern borders, fighting against Malcolm Caenmore; and as that Scotswar became more and more obstinate, the Duke was compelled to call tohis aid nearly the whole of his splendid chivalry, and almost everyNorman foot-soldier that he could prudently withdraw from England. Withsuch mighty forces Duke William marched from the left bank of the Tweedto end of the Frith of Forth, and all through the Lothians; andthereupon the Scots king, albeit he would not deliver up the Saxonnobles who had taken refuge at his court, came and agreed with DukeWilliam, and delivered hostages, and promised to be his man. But bythis time another year was spent, and the fens were againimpracticable; and, moreover, the Norman conqueror was compelled totarry long at Durham, in order to settle the North country. Before thequinzaine of this Nativity the goodly stock of Lord Hereward wasincreased by the birth of a daughter, and Elfric was a father. The twochildren were baptized on the same day; and at the feast, which wasgiven in the same hall at Spalding wherein Ivo Taille-Bois and theLadie Lucia had given their great feast for the christening of theirfirst-born, the merry sword-bearer said, "Well, we be still here! andit is now my opinion that I shall be a grandfather before the Normansshall drive us out of the fens!" The carefully guarded Norman prisonersof rank and note were very sad; but Ivo Taille-Bois was the saddest ofthem all on this festal day, for his wife and child were far away fromhim, living under the protection of the primate Lanfranc at Canterbury,and, much as he had tried, he could get no news of them; nor could hesee any prospect of regaining his liberty, inasmuch as the Lord ofBrunn declared that he wanted not money, and was determined to keep himand his men as hostages.

  With another year there came fresh preparation for invading the fencountry, and giving the deathblow to Saxon liberty by destroyingHereward. But again the saints befriended the last of the Saxons, forgreat commotions burst out in Normandie, and in the county of Maine thepeople rose to a man against the tyrannies and oppressions of DukeWilliam;[256] and thus the Conqueror was constrained to pass over intoFrance with all the troops he could collect. Before he went he sentonce more to offer a free _pardon_ to the Lord of Brunn and a few ofhis adherents; but Hereward said that, in fighting for the libertiesand old laws of his country, he had not done that which called forpardon: and as the terms proposed were otherwise inadmissible, the Lordof Brunn had rejected them all, and had told the proud Duke that hewould yet trust to his sword, and to the bra
ve fenners, and to theinexpungnable country he had so long occupied. Aided by many thousandsof native English soldiers whom he carried over with him into Normandieand Maine, and who there fought most valorously for him, Duke Williamconquered the men of Maine and reduced them to his obedience. But thisoccupied him many months; and when he returned into England, it was toput down another insurrection and a wide-spread conspiracy, which wereheaded not by the Saxon nobles, but by Roger Fitz-Osborne, Raoul deGael, and other nobles of Norman or French birth, who were notsatisfied with the vast estates and high titles they had obtained inEngland, but wanted more, and had long been saying that William theBastard was a tyrant in odium with all men, and that his death wouldgladden their hearts. Battles were fought and sieges were made beforethe Duke had triumphed over this confederacy; and while he was thusfighting and laying sieges, the Lord of Brunn reigned as a king in thefen country, and kept all the countries thereunto adjacent in a stateof constant alarm. The herds and flocks of Hereward and his associatesincreased and multiplied the while; the drained and enclosed groundsgave their bountiful crops; the rivers and meres seemed more than everto abound with fish and wild-fowl; and whatsoever else was wanted wassupplied by successful forays to the upland countries and to thesea-coasts: so great was the plenty, that even the poor bondmen oftenate wheaten bread--white loaves which might have been put upon thetable of my Lord Abbat of Ely. The Ladie Alftrude and the wife of thesword-bearer were again mothers (so gracious were the saints untothem!); and Elfric's first-born son was grown big enough to show amarvellous similitude to his father, _specialiter_ about the laughingmouth and merry eyes.

  Having nothing else upon hand for that present, William sent anothergreat army to try their fortunes in the fen country; and (grieves me tosay!) many of these soldiers were native English, and some few of themmen from the Isle of Ely, who had experience in fen-warfare. Now wasthe manor-house of Brunn retaken, and now was Lord Hereward compelledto abandon Spalding, and to get him gone into the heart of Lincolnshirewith his family and his people, and all his friends, and his Normanprisoners; but he drove off his cattle with him, and he found otherherds where he went; and he found, moreover, subjugated townships andNorman town-governors unprepared to resist him. Some men do say that hehad with him scant three hundred fighting men; but he flitted sorapidly from place to place, and so multiplied his attacks, that theNormans ever thought he had many thousands. And when the great Normanarmy marched against him in Lindsey in the north, Hereward doubledthem, and marched back to the south into Kesteven; and when they cameto look for him in Kesteven, either he was back in Lindsey, orcontinuing his course to the south, he got him into Hoiland and thatflooded country near the Wash, where the Normans never could penetrate,and where every man that lived and went upon tall stilts was his liegeman. Here, in Hoiland, and in perfect safety, chiefly abided the LadieAlftrude, and the women and children, and the Norman prisoners. Thename of the Lord of Brunn was more than ever sounded throughout broadEngland, and from the Wash to the Humber it was a name of dread to allNormans and friends of Normans. Every feat of arms or skilful stratageminspired some new song or tale; and the gleemen were never idle, andwere never unhonoured.