CHAPTER XVII.
HOW HEREWARD TOOK THE NEWS FROM STANFORD BRIGG AND HASTINGS.
After that, news came thick and fast.
News of all the fowl of heaven flocking to the feast of the great God,
that they might eat the flesh of kings, and captains, and mighty men, and
horses, and them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both bond and
free.
News from Rome, how England, when conquered, was to be held as a fief of
St. Peter, and spiritually, as well as temporarily, enslaved. News how the
Gonfanon of St. Peter, and a ring with a bit of St. Peter himself enclosed
therein, had come to Rouen, to go before the Norman host, as the Ark went
before that of Israel.
Then news from the North. How Tosti had been to Sweyn, and bid him come
back and win the country again, as Canute his uncle had done; and how the
cautious Dane had answered that he was a much smaller man than Canute, and
had enough to hold his own against the Norsemen, and could not afford to
throw for such high stakes as his mighty uncle.
Then how Tosti had been to Norway, to Harold Hardraade, and asked him why
he had been fighting fifteen years for Denmark, when England lay open to
him. And how Harold of Norway had agreed to come; and how he had levied
one half of the able-bodied men in Norway; and how he was gathering a
mighty fleet at Solundir, in the mouth of the Sogne Fiord.
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