And one day Martin Lightfoot came with another letter to Hereward, which he delivered to Torfrida, who learned from him that it came from Alftruda.  She bade him deliver it to Hereward, to whom it was addressed, the which he did; but she noticed that this letter Hereward never mentioned to her, as he had done the former.

A month later Martin came again.

“There is another letter come; it came last night,” said he.

“What is that to thee or me?  My lord has his state secrets.  Is it for us to pry into them?  Go.”

“I thought—­I thought—­”

“Go, I say!”

There was a noise of trampling horses outside.  The men were arming and saddling, and Hereward went with them, saying that he would be back in three days.

After he had gone she found, close to where his armour had hung, a letter from Alftruda.  It congratulated Hereward on having shaken himself free from the fascinations of “that sorceress.”  It said that all was settled with King William; Hereward was to come to Winchester.  She had the king’s writ for his safety ready to send to him; the king would receive him as his liegeman.  Alftruda would receive him as her husband.  Archbishop Lanfranc had made difficulties about the dissolution of his marriage with Torfrida, but gold would do all things at Rome; and so forth.

When this was read, after a night of frenzy, to Crowland Torfrida went under the guidance of Martin, and laid her head upon the knees of the Lady Godiva.

“I am come, as you always told me I should do.  But it has been a long way hither, and I am very tired.”

And at Crowland remained Martin, donning a lay brother’s frock that he might the better serve his mistress.  And to Crowland, after three days, came Leofric, the renegade priest, who had been with Hereward in the greenwood, and with him the child.

And so it came that when Hereward returned, as he had said, after three days, he found neither wife nor child, and to Crowland he too went, but came away even as he had gone.  But with Torfrida he had no word, nor with Godiva, for both refused him audience.

So Hereward went to Winchester, and with him forty of his knights, and placed his hands between the hands of William, and swore to be his man.

And William walked out of the hall leaning on Hereward’s shoulder, at which all the Normans gnashed their teeth with envy.

And thereafter Hereward married Alftruda, after the scruples of Holy Church had been duly set at rest.

Then Hereward lived again at Bourne, and tried to bring forgetfulness by drink—­and drink brought boastfulness; for that he had no more the spirit left to do great deeds, he must needs babble of the great deeds which he had done, and hurl insult and defiance at his Norman neighbours.  And in the space of three years he had become as intolerable to those same neighbours as they were intolerable to him, and he was fain to keep up at Bourne the same watch and ward that he had kept up in the forest.