She would go to the
Lady Godiva at Crowland, and take counsel of her, whether there was any
method (for so she put it to herself) of saving Hereward; for she saw but
too clearly that he was fast forgetting all her teaching, and falling back
to a point lower than that even from which she had raised him up.
To go to Crowland was not difficult. It was mid-winter. The dikes were all
frozen. Hereward was out foraging in the Lincolnshire wolds. So Torfrida,
taking advantage of his absence, proposed another foraging party to
Crowland itself. She wanted stuff for clothes, needles, thread, what not.
A dozen stout fellows volunteered at once to take her. The friendly monks
of Crowland would feast them royally, and send them home heaped with all
manner of good things; while as for meeting Ivo Taillebois's men, if they
had but three to one against them, there was a fair chance of killing a
few, and carrying off their clothes and weapons, which would be useful. So
they made a sledge, tied beef-bones underneath it, put Torfrida thereon,
well wrapped in deer and fox and badger skin, and then putting on their
skates, swept her over the fen to Crowland, singing like larks along the
dikes.
And Torfrida went in to Godiva, and wept upon her knees; and Godiva wept
likewise, and gave her such counsel as she could,--how if the woman will
keep the men heroic, she must keep herself not heroic only, but devout
likewise; how she herself, by that one deed which had rendered her name
famous then, and famous (though she never dreamt thereof) now, and it may
be to the end of time,--had once for all, tamed, chained, and as it were
converted, the heart of her fierce young lord; and enabled her to train
him in good time into the most wise, most just, most pious, of all King
Edward's earls.
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