For well-nigh three years after these great happenings Hereward stayed in Flanders, grieving for the woes that had come upon his native land.  Not that he sat moping all the time, for some deed of arms was ever on hand to afford distraction; but in the main his thoughts all turned on schemes for freeing England from the French tyrant.  But not till Gyda, Harold’s widowed mother, came to Baldwin for sanctuary did he take any overt action.

By skilful flattery, not unmixed with truth, she persuaded him that he was the man destined to free England once more; and so one morning he set out alone, accompanied only by Martin Lightfoot and a dozen house-carles, to spy out the land and see what might be done.  Within a week he landed at Boston, only to find that Bourne, his home, had been bestowed upon the cook of Gilbert of Ghent, and that at that moment his younger brother’s head was decorating the gable of the hall.

And so to Bourne went Hereward by night, and burst in upon the Frenchmen during a drunken carouse:  in the morning there were fifteen heads upon the gable to replace the one that he had taken down overnight.  Forthwith he returned to Flanders, having bestowed his mother in safety at Crowland Abbey, with a promise to his countrymen of the Fens that he would return to aid them shortly.

III.—­Hereward in England

Having settled his affairs in Flanders, in due time he landed once more in the Wash with Torfrida and the child and two shiploads of stout fighters, with whom he went through Fenland raising an army.  In the spring came Sweyn with his Danes, all eager for plunder; and Hereward had much ado to prevent them from plundering Crowland Abbey, only succeeding by promising them a richer booty in Peterborough.

So Peterborough they took and sacked, but at Peterborough Hereward found Alftruda, who had left her husband, and rescued her from the Danes during the sack of the minster.  And, looking upon her extraordinary beauty, for the second time he forgot Torfrida; but for all that he sent her for safety to old Gilbert of Ghent, who had thrown in his lot with William, and was now at Lincoln.  Having done with Peterborough, and later with Stamford, the army marched to Ely and there encamped.

And in Ely a great council was held, after which Sweyn and all his Danes returned home.  For as Sweyn truly said, “While William the Frenchman is king by the sword, and Edgar the Englishman king by proclamation of earls and thanes, there seems no room here for Sweyn, nephew of Canute, king of kings.”  To which Hereward could advance no good reason to prove that there was.  Anon came William of Ely, and built a floating bridge a full half-mile in length across the black abyss of mud and reeds that yawned between the island and the mainland.  But the bridge was unable to bear the weight of all the French who crowded on to it; the fastenings at the shore-end broke, and the bridge itself overturned, so that all upon it were thrown into the mud and miserably drowned.