Itchen, silver as they looked on her from above, but when they came down
to her, so clear that none could see where water ended and where air
began, hurried through the city in many a stream. Beyond it rose the
"White Camp,"' the "Venta Belgarum," the circular earthwork of white chalk
on the high down. Within the city rose the ancient minster church, built
by Ethelwold,--ancient even then,--where slept the ancient kings; Kennulf,
Egbert, and Ethelwulf the Saxons; and by them the Danes, Canute the Great,
and Hardicanute his son, and Norman Emma his wife, and Ethelred's before
him; and the great Earl Godwin, who seemed to Hereward to have died, not
twenty, but two hundred years ago;--and it may be an old Saxon hall upon
the little isle whither Edgar had bidden bring the heads of all the wolves
in Wessex, where afterwards the bishops built Wolvesey Palace. But nearer
to them, on the down which sloped up to the west, stood an uglier thing,
which they saw with curses deep and loud,--the keep of the new Norman
castle by the west gate.
Hereward halted his knights upon the down outside the northern gate. Then
he rode forward himself. The gate was open wide; but he did not care to go
in.
So he rode into the gateway, and smote upon that gate with his lance-but.
But the porter saw the knights upon the down, and was afraid to come out;
for he feared treason.
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