"
"Now," cried Hereward, "a boon! a boon! Knight me and these my fellows,
Uncle Brand, this day."
Brand was old and weak, and looked at Herluin.
"I know," said Hereward, "that the French look on us English monk-made
knights as spurious and adulterine, unworthy of the name of knight. But, I
hold--and what churchman will gainsay me?--that it is nobler to receive
sword and belt from a man of God than from a man of blood like one's self;
the fittest to consecrate the soldier of an earthly king, is the soldier
of Christ, the King of kings." [Footnote: Almost word for word from the
"Life of Hereward."]
"He speaks well," said Herluin. "Abbot, grant him his boon."
"Who celebrates high mass to-morrow?"
"Wilton the priest, the monk of Ely," said Herluin, aloud. "And a very
dangerous and stubborn Englishman," added he to himself.
"Good. Then this night you shall watch in the church. To-morrow, after the
Gospel, the thing shall be done as you will."
That night two messengers, knights of the Abbot, galloped from
Peterborough. One to Ivo Taillebois at Spalding, to tell him that Hereward
was at Peterborough, and that he must try to cut him off upon the
Egelric's road, the causeway which one of the many Abbots Egelric had made
some thirty years before, through Deeping Fen to Spalding, at an enormous
expense of labor and of timber.
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