"
"Stay awhile," said she, kissing his head as she combed and curled his
long golden locks; and her own raven ones, hardly more beautiful, fell
over them and mingled with them. "Stay awhile, my pride. There is another
spell in the wind, stirred up by devil or witch-wife, and it comes from
Tosti Godwinsson."
"Tosti, the cold-meat butcher? What has he to say to me?"
"This,--'If Hereward will come with me to William of Normandy, and help us
against Harold, the perjured, then will William do for him all that Harold
would have done, and more beside.'"
"And what answered Torfrida?"
"It was not so said to me that I could answer. I had it by a side-wind,
through the Countess Judith." [Footnote: Tosti's wife, Earl Baldwin's
daughter, sister of Matilda, William the Conqueror's wife.]
"And she had it from her sister, Matilda."
"And she, of course, from Duke William himself."
"And what would you have answered, if you had answered, pretty one?"
"Nay, I know not. I cannot be always queen. You must be king sometimes."
Torfrida did not say that this latter offer had been a much sorer
temptation than the former.
"And has not the base-born Frenchman enough knights of his own, that he
needs the help of an outlaw like me?"
"He asks for help from all the ends of the earth.
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