Man With a Sword by Henry Treece

Author:Henry Treece
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Childrens
ISBN: 9780192770844
Publisher: Puffin
Published: 1962-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

16. Black Bargain

Time passed. In York, Englishmen rose and burned their own city, then butchered the Normans who came to suppress them. Great earls led the English rebels; men like Morcar and Waltheof, who looked like a lion with his mane of hair.

And then the Conqueror came north and put the villages to the torch, and men to the sword. Slaves in the north fetched no price at all. You could have bought a man for less than you could a horse or a cow. The countryside stank with smoke. Young children crept from house to house in the districts that escaped, begging to be put to some task in return for food to fill their swollen bellies. They were weary of eating acorns and grass.

The north had become a wilderness. It was even worse than when the Danes had come, in the time of Ethelred.

Hereward was at Brigg in Lindsey. There he ate well and had his feet to a warm fire. The men of Lindsey were old men of the Danelaw. They knew how to hide away a man who was wanted by the foreign soldiers. They knew how to keep their mouths shut - and their front doors open.

Hereward dined each day with the sons of Swein of Denmark, who had a shelter a little way up the street, beyond the church.

Each night, as the torches flared, they told him, ‘When our father comes again into the Humber, all will be well with you. Give him your help, call the folk here about you to fight for him, lead them - and you shall have your wife and son again. Swein the King has promised this, and he is not the man to go back on his word. He is a Dane, my friend.’

Hereward bowed his head and smiled secretly. He, too, knew Danes. And they were not always as they thought they were, in other men’s eyes.

But the months passed and still there was no news of Swein setting forth from Denmark.

One bright morning Hereward went into the little square-towered church beside the River Ancholme and knelt before the plain altar there. In a low voice he said, ‘God, I have been a laggard in observing Your wishes. That I acknowledge. I like a straight-speaking man, God. I like a man who admits to his faults, whether he be a cowherd or a thegn. I have been too full of other things, Lord. But now I have the sense to see that I have been wrong. Forgive me, God.’

Candles fluttered in the draughty little church, and women up for the market crossed themselves to see this big, raw-boned soldier, a sword and dagger beside him, muttering so loudly.

Hereward said, ‘God, a bargain with You, if You please.’

He waited for a while, to see if the candles went out, or a sudden thunderstorm flung tiles from the church roof. But these things did not happen, so Hereward went on.

‘God,’ he said, ‘I have a wife and a son, and to me they are more than anything in life.

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