Know you that
Gospatrick has been driven from his earldom on charge of treason, and that
Waltheof has Northumbria in his place, as well as the parts round you? And
that Gospatrick is fled to Scotland again, with his sons,--my man among
them? And now the report comes, that my man is slain in battle on the
Border; and that I am to be given away,--as I have been given away twice
before,--to Ascelin. This I know, as I know all, not only from him of
Ghent, but from him of Peterborough, Ascelin's uncle."
Hereward laughed a laugh of cynical triumph,--pardonable enough in a
broken man.
"Gospatrick! the wittol! the woodcock! looking at the springe, and then
coolly putting his head therein. Throwing the hatchet after the helve!
selling his soul and never getting the price of it! I foresaw it, foretold
it, I believe to Alftruda herself,--foretold that he would not keep his
bought earldom three years. What a people we are, we English, if
Gospatrick is,--as he is,--the shrewdest man among us, with a dash of
canny Scots blood too. 'Among the one-eyed, the blind is king,' says
Torfrida, out of her wise ancients, and blind we are, if he is our best.
No. There is one better man left I trust, one that will never be fool
enough to put his head into the wolf's mouth, and trust the Norman, and
that is Hereward the outlaw.
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