CHAPTER XX.

À OUTRANCE.

The morning came, and with it cares more important than the fate of the poor Knight of Sourdeval.

Before the dew was off the meadows, the shrill trumpets of the besiegers were heard at the barbican, demanding a parley, and calling for admittance in the name of the king.

The countess, holding counsel with Sir Hoël de St. Brice and Sir Alain de Gourin, and other of the knights of the garrison, replied that she would accede to the parley, and receive the messenger in person; and, accordingly, the messenger was blindfolded, admitted within the castle, and conducted to the council-chamber in the great tower.

The knight who bore the message of the king's lieutenants was sheathed in complete armour, and exceedingly stately in his mien and figure, being tall and of great personal strength. He was no other than Robert Malet, whose father, the loved and honoured William Malet, had been in bodily prowess second to none but the Conqueror himself of those who fought on the Norman side at Hastings.

As he entered the room, the rebel knights instinctively straightened themselves, and assumed such dignity of bearing as they were capable of showing; but none bore comparison with him save Leofric Ealdredsson, the stalwart Anglo-Dane, who had never bent the knee to the Norman Conqueror, and who now stood at the right hand of the countess, with the lightnings of a noble defiance gleaming in his blue eyes.

Yet Malet himself was to become a rebel before his death. When the silken kerchief with which his eyes had been covered was removed, he gazed proudly round the assembly, and bowed his tall head to the countess alone.

'In the name of William the Conqueror, King of England and Duke of Normandy,' he said in a commanding voice, 'I call upon Ralph de Guader and Montfort, heretofore Earl of East Anglia, but deprived of his earldom for that he has wrongfully taken arms against his suzerain and liege lord; and I demand that he instantly surrenders this castle, which he holds only as the Constable of the king. I demand that entrance into the said castle be at once given to the troops of his Grace the king, and that he thereby refrain from adding still further to his guilt, by contumaciously retaining it.'

'The Earl of East Anglia hath taken ship from this country, and hath devolved the duties of Castellan upon me, his countess,' replied Emma calmly.

'In that case, noble lady,—I cannot style thee countess, for thou hast no longer right to the title,—I call upon thee, as Castellan of this castle of Blauncheflour, to surrender it to the lieutenants of thy liege and kinsman, William of Normandy,' answered the young knight, fixing his keen blue eyes upon Emma's fair face, whose features, worn by the anxiety she had undergone, were pathetic in their pallor, and moved his heart to pity. 'I may well suppose,' he continued boldly, 'that in so doing thou wilt with pleasure disburden thy slender shoulders of so heavy and unwomanly a burden.'

Emma drew herself up with a slight gesture of disdain for such misbestowed sympathy. The knight responded by adding hastily, 'Moreover, I would appeal to thy gentleness and natural instincts of mercy to prevent the useless shedding of blood which the holding of this castle must cause, by prolonging a struggle which can only end one way.'

Emma's delicate nostrils quivered, and the fine firm lips set fiercely.

'The Countess of East Anglia desires to know the terms on which she is asked to yield up her faithful garrison to the tender mercies of the men who mutilated Stephen le Hareau,' she said, still calmly, but with flashing eyes, and due emphasis on her title. 'The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, and methinks her gentleness and love of mercy are more nearly concerned in preventing her faithful defenders from encountering such a fate as his.'

'To the Castellan of Blauncheflour I reply, that the surrender must be without conditions,' answered the knight.

'In that case,' answered Emma, 'the Countess of East Anglia replies, that her garrison will win their own terms by their swords.'

Leofric Ealdredsson burst out with a loud 'Ahoi!' in the exuberance of his approbation, and clashed his heavy axe upon the floor, his many bracelets jingling like small bells. 'Well said!' exclaimed the venerable Sir Hoël de St. Brice, looking at the young countess with an expression of reverent affection, and from one and all the representatives of the garrison who stood around her chair broke various expressions of approval.

The countess turned to her knights with sparkling eyes. 'I have ye with me, then, in this reply, fair sirs?' she asked, and the tumult of assent with which they answered hindered Robert Malet, for some moments, from further speech.

In truth the enthusiasm was contagious, and the royal envoy's own eyes flashed. The chivalrous spirit of Fitzosbern's daughter jumped well with his humour. He had been a sorry Norman else; no true heritor of the wild sea-kings. It cost him some effort to resist his impulse to join in the applause, but he controlled himself, and said gravely, 'I pray thee, noble lady, to consider well before coming to so direful a decision; involving, as it doth, no less an issue than the adding of high treason on thine own part to the heavy guilt of the man thou hast wedded against the express mandate of thy suzerain. The daughter of William Fitzosbern should be slow to draw the sword against William of Normandy.'

'The decision is final, Sir Knight,' replied Emma curtly; thinking to herself that William of Normandy had not scrupled to insult the son and daughter of William Fitzosbern. She added to those in attendance, 'Let this brave gentleman be reconducted to the gate without delay.'

The envoy bowed in silence, and, allowing the silken kerchief to be again bound over his eyes, he marched with stately grace from the apartment.

So Emma de Guader cast down her gauntlet beside that of her husband, and dared the power of her great cousin.

Before the sun was midway in the heavens, a fierce struggle had begun between the besiegers and the besieged for possession of the barbican. This was not a strong construction of masonry as in the Norman castles of the twelfth century, but a deep and wide fosse or moat, with a high vallum strengthened with stout palisading on its inner side, of a semicircular or horseshoe form, the horns nearly touching the present ditch. The causeway that passed between the horns and the present ditch, by which access was given to the castle, was amply protected by the towers of the gate-house and the walls of the castle itself, from whence arrows and quarrels would easily reach assailants. The similar fosse and palisaded vallum surrounding the castle meadow afforded additional protection to the eastern extremity of the causeway; the portion of the semicircle to the south-west being most open to attack.

Spearmen and javelin-throwers lined the palisades, and from their cover repelled the onslaught of the assaulting men-at-arms, who had further to withstand a whizzing shower of arrows from bowmen hiding in the wooden stalls of the market.

The king's men were endeavouring to throw a wooden bridge across the ditch. One end was furnished with wheels, the other with huge grappling-irons, which they strove to make fast in the vallum.

Watching them stood Leofric Ealdredsson, who, on the night before, when Sir Alain de Gourin had been sneering at the primitive Saxon earthworks, had said, with a laugh and a fierce gleam in his eyes, 'Let me defend them; I am used to the rude English fashions.' A band of his terrible house-carles, armed with their great battle-axes, and long of hair and large of limb, waited his orders with the air of bloodhounds in a leash straining at their collars.

From a loophole on the southern side of the keep, lighting the gallery which runs within the walls on a level with the great entrance, the countess and her bower-maiden Eadgyth watched the strife.

Eadgyth had been present in the council-chamber during the audience of Robert Malet. 'Thou wast grand, Emma,' she was saying to her lady and friend. 'Thou wast so strong and courageous, while, to say sooth, my own heart was beating like an armourer's hammer.'

'Thou art a strange child, my Eadgyth,' said Emma affectionately, well pleased with the admission of the English maiden.

A wilder shout from the besiegers than any preceding broke their converse, and for some moments each watched the progress of the fight in breathless silence.

For the assailants had established their bridge against the vallum, and over it the attacking knights charged in a body, led by Robert Malet in person, his high crest topping them all, and by sheer weight of horse and harness they drave down the barricades and pressed in, hewing in sunder all before them.

Eadgyth gave a shrill scream and threw her arms wildly round the countess, who stood motionless, with eyes dilated and heaving breast.

Then rang out the wild Norse war-cry, 'Ahoi! ahoi!' And Leofric and his fierce carles sprang forward like tigers; and the flash and crash of their great axes smote eye and ear, while more than one knightly saddle was emptied, more than one riderless destrier ran neighing around the enclosure; more than one mailed warrior, impervious to arrows and quarrels, was cloven through his helm and lay lifeless on the ground.

The Anglo-Danes laughed in their yellow beards, and vigorously improved their advantage, so that in a few moments the knights were forced back beyond the line of the barricades, some getting back across the bridge, some falling into the water.

'See, foolish child! thy cousin has driven them back!' cried Emma. For Leofric was akin to Harold on the mother's side, and so akin to Eadgyth. She stroked the cheek of the frightened girl as a mother who comforts an infant. 'And had he not, there are stout walls and strong arms betwixt them and thee.'

'I know it! I know it! But it is all so terrible! I have not thy nerves of steel! Oh, Emma, in pity watch no longer! I cannot bear it!'

'Faint heart!' cried Emma lovingly. 'The clash of arms doth but spur my courage. I have always loved it from my cradle. Methinks I had made a doughty knight! It is not danger that quells me.'

Her face grew sad, for the bitter pang of an uneasy conscience gnawed her soul. Danger did not quell her, but her doubting heart tormented her.

'Let me then starve, dear lady; I cannot lift my hand against my heart's witness to the right.'

The sentence sprang into her mind and seemed to glow before her eyes as if it had been seared upon her brain with red-hot irons.

She drew her breath with a long shuddering sigh. In the rapid crowding of events that morning, the man who had spoken it in such despairing earnest had been forgotten, though she had thought of nothing else through the long watches of the night.

She turned to Eadgyth, and bade her go to the chapel, and offer prayers for the earl, and the garrison, and the souls of the fallen. 'Thou wilt feel safe within the holy precincts,' she said; 'and Dame Amicia shall attend me. She is short of sight, and the shouts of yonder madmen will scarce penetrate her ears; she will prove more courageous than art thou.'

When the aged lady-in-waiting came to her, in obedience to the message Eadgyth had conveyed, the countess left the loophole through which so stirring a drama was visible, and advanced to meet her. 'I need the support of thy reverend presence, dear dame,' she said, and told her how she had found one of her lord's knights imprisoned, as she believed, on a misunderstanding, and that she wished to question him again, having taken it upon her to free him.

The old lady could hear each syllable of Emma's clear, soft voice, though she was untroubled by the shouts of the combatants below, and she nodded her stately head with its crown of snow-white hair, tastefully draped with a broidered veil of Cyprian crape.

'A good lad, a good lad, and ever courteous,' answered Dame Amicia. 'Thou dost well to probe the matter. I thought he had gone to Bretagne.'

'It seems he was in durance in this castle,' said Emma. 'But we knew it not; or, if my lord knew it, he had no time to sift the charges against him. Methinks, if he have somewhat erred, he has been punished enough, and I may grant him pardon.'

'Ay; if we forgive not the trespasses of others, how can we pray with a clean heart that our own may be forgiven?' replied the old lady, nodding again. 'We must practise forgiveness, or our paternosters are but a mockery.'

No further words were spoken till they reached the apartment to which, according to the orders of the countess, Sir Aimand had been conveyed.

De Gourin had taken the precaution to place a stout warder at the door, who announced the visit of the countess to the knight.

When Emma entered the chamber, Sir Aimand threw himself on his knee before her, with an expression of deep homage, and bowed to her and to her venerable attendant.

'Noble countess,' he exclaimed, 'I scarce know how to form my gratitude in words!'

Emma was freshly shocked when she saw his face and form. Shaven and close-clipped as became a Norman knight, and clad in tunic and hose, the ravages of two months of misery were but the more conspicuous, as they owed no adventitious aid to wild elf-locks and shaggy beard. His cheeks were sunken, and his eyes unnaturally bright with fever, and the bones of his thin hands and limbs were pitiful to see. His voice also was hoarse and hollow. Emma felt that the revelations of the morning moved her more, not less, than the doleful horrors of the preceding night.

'I fear me thou hast greatly suffered,' she said involuntarily. 'Rise, Sir Aimand, and be seated; thou art not fit to stand.'

And Sir Aimand was forced to obey her, for, as he rose to his feet, he tottered and clutched at a stool for support, and Emma recalled some fears that had crossed her mind during the night, with pathetic amusement, for she had been haunted with the idea that she had perhaps let loose a very dangerous champion in the castle. The poor knight looked little able to fight either for her cause or against it.

'I had come hither to question thee more closely as to the circumstances of thy imprisonment,' the countess said, 'and to see if thy proud spirit be at all softened by my bounty, but methinks the best thing I can do is to send thee a good leech.'

'Noble countess, thy generosity hath not left me unmoved,' said Sir Aimand eagerly. 'I give thee my parole, neither to attempt escape, nor in any way to communicate with, aid, or abet the besiegers, if indeed thou wilt be gracious enough to accept it so ungraciously and tardily given.'

'I will accept it,' replied the countess, with a gratified smile; and Dame Amicia smiled also, seeing that her lady was well pleased, although her deafness prevented her from knowing very clearly her reasons for satisfaction.

The countess had felt that the old dame's infirmity might be convenient, for the chief object of her visit was to question the knight more closely regarding the circumstances of his imprisonment, and she cared not to trust his indictment of Sir Alain to any of her gossip-loving ladies.

'I would that Sir Alain bore not so important a position in the garrison,' she said, after listening again to De Sourdeval's story. 'The Bretons make the most part of our strength, and, save one or two, who are vassals to my lord, he hath them all under his command.'

'Lady,' answered De Sourdeval, 'strive not to see me righted to the detriment of thy welfare. It may well be that De Gourin will serve thee faithfully, though he satisfied a private vengeance against me. Let him not know that I accuse him; say only that thou dost grant me pardon. But be on thy guard against him.'

'It must be so,' answered the countess, 'for the present.'

So saying, she took her leave, the knight following her with grateful eyes.

When Emma regained her bower, she summoned Eadgyth to her.

'I have news to comfort thy courage,' she said. 'A doughty champion is in the castle. Does not thy heart tell thee his name?'

Eadgyth opened her blue eyes in vague surprise, then cried, with a start of joy,—

'Ah, Emma, dear Emma! hath the earl so soon returned?'

'Fie, maiden! wouldst make me jealous? Doth thy heart suggest the name of my lord?'

'What meanest thou, Emma? Jest not, I pray thee. These days are too terrible for jesting,' said Eadgyth, with distressed mien and paling cheeks.

Emma took both her slender wrists in hers and looked lovingly in her face. 'Nay, we must jest to keep our blood from curdling, Eadgyth. But I will not tease thee. Sweet, 'tis Sir Aimand de Sourdeval of whom I speak.'

Eadgyth said nothing, but met Emma's gaze with eyes in which joy and surprise, and doubt of herself that was almost terror, were struggling for mastery.

Emma drew her gently upon the seat beside her. 'Surely thou art glad to know that he is safe, if thou joyest not that he is near?'

'Ah yes! I am glad—glad indeed of his safety!' replied Eadgyth in a low, thrilling voice, and her hand sought the bracelet which she wore as ever.

'And not of his nearness?'

'I know not! I know not! It means but fresh struggle and misery!' The tears rolled down her cheeks.

'Why struggle, Eadgyth? Fate has united you when all pointed to separation. Eadgyth, he needs thee. I told thee sooth when I said he was in safety. But he has suffered much. He is ill. Be thou his leech. Dame Amicia will attend thee—her motherly heart warms towards the youth.'

'Ill?' Eadgyth looked in the countess's eyes with almost fierce questioning.

'Ill,' repeated Emma, smiling. 'Not dying; not in danger; I said "safe." It is a long story, Eadgyth, but I must tell it thee.'

Then she told the history we already know; and how, after Eadgyth's remark about him on the battlements, it had entered her heart to have a mass said for him; how it had led to his discovery, and how she had visited him in his dungeon.

When she came to that point, and narrated her visit, describing his sorrowful aspect with unconscious pathos, Eadgyth sprang up and clasped her hands above her head. 'Oh, the terrible injustice of it!' she groaned, and afterwards she paced backwards and forwards, unable to control her emotion.

'But thy hero was shrewdly saucy, Eadgyth. Woebegone and desperate as he was,—I almost wish I had let thee see the figure he cut, with his unkempt beard and tangled locks, as long as those of thy Saxon champions,—natheless he would make no terms. I might free him, or leave him chained by the leg like a hobbled steed, as I found him. One might have thought he had passed a pleasant time down there in the dark. He would not even give me his parole not to help our besiegers if I gave him the chance.'

Eadgyth's eyes lighted up with a proud joy. 'That was noble,' she said under her breath.

Emma laughed. 'He had come to a better mind this morning,' she said; 'I found means whereby to tame his proud spirit.'

Eadgyth turned to her with a start, and wild visions of racks and thumbscrews, and other fashionable instruments of the time, passed through her mind. Her spirit was so torn with the terror of the day, and the excitement she had undergone, that she did not pause to consider probabilities. 'Emma! thou hadst not heart to crush one so unhappy?'

'I had!' said Emma.

Eadgyth's eyes looked dumb reproach more eloquent than words.

'Yes,' said Emma; 'I hold not the office of Castellan of Blauncheflour by halves! I made use of my power.'

'What didst thou do?' asked Eadgyth in a scarcely audible voice.

'I gave him his liberty without conditions, and had him lodged in one of the best apartments of the castle. That touched my knight's pride; he would not have me outdo him in generosity, so he capitulated this morning, and offered me his parole without further asking!' and the countess broke into a silvery peal of laughter.

'Oh, Emma, that was like thy dear self!' cried Eadgyth, running to the countess, throwing herself on her knees before her, and hiding her head in Emma's robes like a repentant child.

Emma kissed her. 'Now, maiden, thy part must be done. The knight has promised neither to help the enemy nor to attempt escape. Be it for thee to persuade him to buckle on his harness and fight for us. He can scarce see thy sweet face, and know thou art in danger, and not lift his hand to help thee!'

'I persuade him!—to break his knightly vows and fight against his lawful liege? Never!' cried Eadgyth, raising her head and throwing it back proudly. 'Strange,' she continued, more to herself than to the countess, indeed, scarce knowing that she spoke aloud, 'how thy haught courage and noble generosity are allied with so little sense of moral right!'

A flash of pain and some indignation crossed the countess's brow. 'I deny thy right to judge me,' she said coldly. 'There are some who strain after such high ideals, they fail to see the duties that lie near; gratitude, for instance, and the welfare of their friends!'

Eadgyth was silent, for she felt that Emma was unjust; she would have given her life to serve her, though she would not go a step against her conscience.

'Sir Aimand has suffered much,' said the countess gently, after a pause. 'He is out of health and out of hope. A little happiness would serve him in better stead than an armful of herbs and simples. Go to him, Eadgyth! Encourage his contumacy if thou wilt, but go to him.'

And Eadgyth went.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE ORDEAL BY FIRE.

At the close of the day the barbican still remained in the keeping of the besieged.

It had not been retained without the loss of many a stout soldier, and the spital was crowded with patients, who occupied all the healing talents of the countess and her ladies.

When Emma at last retired to her chamber, with her Saxon bower-maiden in attendance, she was so weary and worn with the excitement and strain of the day, that she threw herself upon the bed, without even taking off her jewels, and fell asleep almost immediately; while Eadgyth, after softly laying a warm coverlet over her, lay down beside her.

But not to sleep. Her brain was full of dire and disturbing images, and even the face of Sourdeval, which it had been so great a joy to her to behold once more, came to her as she had seen it, wan and melancholy, when he turned to her as she entered his apartment, before it flashed with brightness on recognising who had come to him. The change in him had shocked her, and in her nervous and depressed mood she thought of him as one whom death had marked for his own, and his image was but as a pale spectre, round which the manifold forms of wounded and dying and tortured men, whom she had beheld during the day, grouped as a central point.

Her ears were full of the wild shouts of the besiegers and the shrieks of the injured, the awful clash of seax on helm, and hurtle and whiz of arrows. Again and again she woke from a fitful doze, thinking to hear the thunder of charging knights and the fierce 'Aoi!' of Leofric Ealdredsson and his carles, as they leaped forth from the cover of the palisades upon the foe.

At last from such an awakening she sprang from the bed; better, she thought, to wake all night than suffer such awful dreams.

But the awakening did not silence the cries. They were no dreams, those screams of terror, those head-rending shrieks for help, they were dreadful realities; and, rushing to the window, she gazed out with a beating heart at the western sky, which flickered and flared with strange and ghostly gleams.

She ran back to the sleeping countess, and by the lurid light saw that she was smiling in her sleep.

'Wake! wake! Oh, Emma! dear countess! this is no night for sleep. Methinks the dawn is like to bring the last dread day! Alas! she sleeps like a young infant that knows not danger or woe. Wake, Emma! Thy life may hang on it!'

Then the countess, opening her eyes dreamily, murmured, 'Thou hast brought good succour, Ralph!' The next moment she started up. 'Mary Mother! what is it, child?'

'There is murder in the air, Emma! See, the very sky is full of tokens. Listen! listen! Oh, saints in heaven! how they scream!'

They did indeed! The countess sprang from the bed and rushed to the window also.

'They have fired the town!' she cried; 'they have fired the town!—the Saxon quarter! Sir Hoël said they would!'

'The Saxon quarter! Oh, my home, my home!' cried Eadgyth, and, pressing her hands to her ears in a vain effort to shut out the shrieks of the sufferers, she cowered, with closed eyes, upon the floor.

'Let us go to the great portal of the keep, whence we can see it,' said the countess.

'See it!' cried Eadgyth. 'Ah, Emma, no! I could not look! It would kill me.'

But Emma went forth boldly, intent to know if anything could be done to rescue the victims.

Norwich in those days was an open town. The walls and towers, of which portions still remain to gladden the eyes of archaeologists, were not built till some fifty years later, so that it was not possible to defend the town itself. Moreover, although the earl had found supporters amongst the Saxon and Anglo-Danish inhabitants of the older quarters, numbering more than one relative of Harold Godwinsson, the majority of the Norman denizens of the New Burg around the Chapel-in-the-Field remained loyal to William, and were ready to give all help to the besiegers. For this reason was it that the western sky had but flickered with the reflections of flames. It was the Saxon quarter by the river, the wooden tenements in King Street, which provided fuel for the bonfire.

Looking east from the portal of the great tower, a grand and terrible spectacle confronted the beholders.

Crackling flames shot up against the dark midnight sky, dancing like living demons of fiery destruction, and sinking only to lick the doomed houses with their scorching tongues and spring up higher than ever. Every now and again some beam or stone would burst with a sharp report, throwing blazing fragments into the air; and the volumes of smoke rolled far into the night, lurid with the red glare of the flames. Moats and marshes and river gleamed and sparkled weirdly with the light of destruction, so that the ground was broken by inverted images of fiery tongues; and it seemed, indeed, as if the nether world—so ardently believed in by those who were watching as a material hell of fire and brimstone—had broken bounds, and was let loose to destroy the world.

But most awful was it to see the small black figures that every now and again raised wild arms against the flare of the fire; most awful was it to here the screams that every now and again rose above the dull roar and crackle and hiss of the destroying element.

When such figures were seen, and such sounds heard, curses and execrations burst from the white lips of the soldiers who were crowding the eastern walls of Blauncheflour, and the knights who had assembled before the portal of the keep.

As the countess came down amongst them, she could not repress an exclamation of horror, for never in her life had she beheld anything so awful.

Sir Hoël de St. Brice came instantly to her side.

'Alas, dear lady! this is no scene for thee. Return to thy bower. There is no danger for the castle.'

'My place is here, Sir Hoël,' said Emma firmly. 'I am Castellan of this castle. The battle is not always to the strong. See, yonder flames hissing through the air are more terrible than a hundred mailed warriors! The flame of wit is given to woman as well as to man!'

'William's men are doing thee homage, noble countess,' said De Gourin, with a sneer. 'These are finer bonfires than the good people of Norwich lighted on the night of thy arrival in their town!'

Emma turned from him with a shudder of disgust.

'How hath this been accomplished, Sir Hoël?' she asked of the older knight. 'By what means hath the fire been enkindled?'

'The king's men are provided with mighty engines,' answered Sir Hoël. 'Never have I seen mangonel or balista that carried so far. They are throwing red-hot stones and balls of lead from them, and the old houses yonder have been so well dried by the sun of late, that they burn like tinder. See,' he added, pointing out some glowing stars in the south-east, which Emma had not before distinguished from the burning fragments tossed aloft by the action of the flame, 'their fiery hail continues even now. They have got possession of the Cyning Ford, and are flinging their missiles from across the river.'

'And are we to stand here and gape at them, and do nought to stop them?' demanded the countess eagerly. 'Good St. Nicholas! how the cattle bellow in the castle meadow! Are the poor beasts in danger?'

'The fire frightens them, and no wonder!' answered Sir Hoël. 'But they are in safety, unless, perhaps, some fragment, here and there, may be carried from the fire, and somewhat scorch their hides. As for thy former question, I see not that anything can be done. Having possession of the ford, I know not how we can dislodge them.'

'It would be but throwing away good lives to attempt it,' said De Gourin, who cared little whether a few Saxons more or less were burned on their own hearthstones.

'Eadgyth!' exclaimed the countess impetuously to her bower-maiden, who had followed her, notwithstanding her terror, 'hast thou not told me there was a way through the marshes, that Harold used against the Vikings?'

Eadgyth, with wild eyes and teeth chattering in the extremity of her horror, gazed at the countess as if her fear had taken away her reason.

The countess repeated her question, and Eadgyth, with an effort, forced herself to attend.

'Ay, that is so. My kinsman Leofric would be familiar with it. He has fought every inch of this ground against the Danes under your lord!' she said.

'Where is this Leofric? Let him be summoned,' commanded the countess.

'He is yonder helping his countrymen to save their skins from the fire,' said Sir Alain contemptuously.

Again the countess commanded, 'Let him be summoned!'

And when, not long after, Leofric Ealdredsson stood before her, still breathing hard after his exertions, his face begrimed with dust and smoke, and the wild firelight gleaming on his torc and mail corselet and bracelets, she asked him if he knew of any way by which he could steal unperceived through the marshes, and take the artillerymen of the foe by surprise.

'By Asgaard! yes!' exclaimed Leofric, turning to De Gourin. 'And so I told this fair sir an hour ago, and offered to show him how he might take them in flank, and stuff their accursed red-hot balls down their own throats; or I would have taken a band under my own order, twenty of my house-carles, if he would add twenty stout men from the garrison. But he would hear none of it.'

'We shall be the safer that the buildings yonder are burned,' said De Gourin. 'Why throw away good lives to stop it?'

'Why was I not told of this suggestion?' asked Sir Hoël, frowning. 'Thou takest over much upon thyself, Sir Alain!'

'Grant me the men now, countess!' said Leofric eagerly.

'My lord owed his life to thee, Leofric Ealdredsson!' answered the countess. 'I know I may trust thee! Take thy stout carles, and twenty men beside.'

'Ahoi! By Freya! thou art a pearl among women!' cried the wild Leofric, who was much of a Viking himself.

'Ah, kinsman Leofric, leave those heathen names alone!' said Eadgyth. 'Thou hast a better symbol in the hilt of thy sword!'

But he had not stopped to listen to her. He had gone off to call his carles together, and to choose his twenty men from the garrison.

And some forty of them, for the most part Anglo-Danes or Saxons, left the castle a few minutes later, leaving by the western horn of the barbican, and making their way by the streets north of the castle, by Tombland, to the river; slipping along through the fire-lighted night with a panther-like trot on their silent shoes of untanned leather, their trusty seaxes in their right hands, and their round red shields on their left arms.

Arrived at the river, they possessed themselves of boats without particularly asking the leave of the owners, and crossed-over to the marshes on the eastern bank, leaving a man in each boat to guard it. They crept through the rushes, as only men who had grown up amid the fens could have done, and fell upon the unsuspecting Normans like thunderbolts; knocked their balistas to fragments, served a good many of their men likewise, and returned as they came to the west bank of the river.

Then they added their strength to that of the townsfolk to fight the flames, and, by means of clearing large spaces to windward of the burning houses, stopped the fire from spreading its ravages indefinitely. But five less returned through the castle gate than had left it.

So went the first day and the first night of the siege.

When day broke, the attack on the barbican began again, and so it was for five days afterward; but at the end of the sixth the barricades were almost battered down, and strong bridges were established across the ditch, so that the defenders thought it wise to abandon it to the enemy, as scarcely worth the lives it would cost to maintain possession of it. But this meant no very great advantage to the besiegers.

They stood before the great gate of the castle, the actual entrance to which looked like a mere mouse-hole between the sheer strong walls of its two flanking towers. They well knew the make of such gateways: their folding-doors of solid oak, strengthened with bars and bolts of iron, and studded with huge nails to prevent the cutting out of a panel or staving in of the same; the strong portcullis behind them, a harrow-shaped iron grating, to be let up and down in a moment by means of pulleys from the inside; above the doors a row of chimney-like apertures, called machicolations, through which the defenders could pour scalding water, molten lead, or any other deadly matter, upon the devoted heads of the assaulting column, who were exposed also to a cross fire of quarrels, stones, and other missiles from the flanking towers.

Truly, to assault such a portal was no child's play, even with such aid as could be given by the rude artillery of the times: petronels and agerons for throwing stones and leaden pellets, catapultas for shooting arrows, and the trebuchettum, or warrewolf, specially designed for the smashing in of gates and walls; all these, and more of their kind, the king's men were well provided with.

Stout Earl Warrenne, and the astute Bishop of Coutances, and the accomplished lance, Robert Malet, held many a consultation as they rode round the invested fortress, and scanned it eagerly to see if haply they might discover some weak point which should give them advantage in the attack.

But they decided that they must become masters of the great gate, and so of the ditch, before they could make any assault on the castle itself.

A month had passed away before they were so masters; but being so, they had their opponents in a veritable trap. The besieged knew well that a harder struggle than ever lay before them in their awful isolation, cut off from communion with their fellow-creatures by a wall of human fury as effectually as if they had been wrecked on some desert island in that vast ocean of the west, the opposite shores of which were all unknown to them, though its great eastern rollers dashed in spray upon the Breton and Norman coasts.

Through all this weary time of fear and suspense, with its harassing duties and oppressive sorrows, the Countess Emma found comfort in two dumb friends: Oliver, the earl's Spanish destrier, who had been left in the fortress when De Guader embarked for Denmark; and the brave tassel-gentle, that had been Ralph's gift to her upon the day on which she had promised to share his fortunes, good or ill.

Oliver had been restored to his master, after he had been struck down by Odo's mace, by one of those strange accidents which seem to have the finger of fate in them. Some of the old thegn Ealdred's men had visited the battlefield several days after the fight, to see how the land lay and what the king's men were doing. They were attacked by a band of Norman soldiers, headed by a knight who was mounted on a splendid destrier. The animal was full of strength and courage, but the rider being, as they afterwards found, one Stephen Main-de-fer, a parvenu who had made his fortune out of the woes of England, like so many of his countrymen, and who had won his spurs without having learned to ride, instead of profiting by the noble booty that had fallen to his share, was brought to his ruin thereby; for the fiery barb, unused to such handling as he gave it, and doubtless wondering, like Johnny Gilpin's steed, 'what thing upon his back had got,' became unmanageable in the excitement of the fray, and threw his clumsy new master heavily to the earth. There he lay sprawling, as little versed in carrying his armour as in managing his horse, and Ealdred's men did not lose their opportunity of despatching him. After a short struggle, his followers beat their retreat, and the destrier fell into the hands of the Anglo-Danes, who took him back with them to their refuge in the Fens, where he was immediately recognised with much jubilation by Grillonne, and restored to his master.

So it came to pass that Ralph de Guader had been able to ride back into Blauncheflour on his trusty Oliver.

Since the earl had quitted the castle, Emma had visited the barb morning and night, and had taken him many a dainty wastel cake or sugary comfit such as horses love; and, stroking his satin neck with many an endearment, longed for the time when she should see his master on his back again. A time which would never come!

At such moments she would often have the tassel-gentle on her wrist, and the bird seemed almost human, so intelligent and tame was he.

She needed some comfort, for she had one great sorrow. The gentle and loving Dame Amicia de Reviers, who had watched over her from her cradle, was stricken down by paralysis, and a few days later died. It was really but the natural end of a long and happy life; but Emma, in the mood for self-torture, blamed herself for having dragged the aged dame into tumult and terror, and shed tears that were beyond the usual bitterness of grief. She was buried in the holy precincts of St. Martin at Bayle, which stood before the castle gate, the besiegers granting a truce for the occasion, with that chivalrous courtesy that was so oddly mixed with the ferocity of the times.

So the king's men and the earl's met in friendly sympathy one day, and prepared for bitter contest on the morrow, when the besiegers planned to make assault upon the walls themselves.

Within the castle all was bustle and business. Harness was mended and bullets were moulded, bows restrung and arrows feathered, axes and swords whirred on the grindstone, huge cauldrons were prepared wherein to heat water to pour upon besiegers' heads; and even the countess and her ladies helped to carry stones with their own fair hands, and pile them ready for the use of the slingers.

Meanwhile the swallows wheeled and twittered overhead as they wheel and twitter now; and down in the woods the merles and mavises sang on undisturbed by the tumult, while swans were marshalling green-grey cygnets across the pools in the marshes of the Cowholme.

CHAPTER XXII.

A SUBTERRANEAN CONFLICT.

The besiegers on their part had not been idle. They had established quite a menagery of mechanical contrivances, rejoicing in the zoological names of tortoises, sows, and cats, to protect their approaches to the white walls of Blauncheflour, and under cover of these they had cut a channel to the castle ditch and drained the water from it, so that it was as dry as at present, though, instead of growing fair greenery of bushes and flowers, it showed a bottom of parched, fœtid mud under the hot summer sun.

They had thrown up large mounds of earth at intervals around the ballium, and upon these had built up towers of wood overtopping the walls. These were furnished with drawbridges which could be let down at pleasure upon the merlons of the battlements, so to give ingress to their men-at-arms; their upper storeys serving to shelter archers and slingers, while from the lower, battering-rams were sturdily plied, and the warrewolves flung their stones and balls of lead.

These towers had cost them many good lives, for not one had been established without a fierce struggle. Sally after sally had been made from the castle, but, in the end, numbers prevailed, and at last their impertinent wooden crests were reared above the Caen stone of Blauncheflour.

Those within were, however, more troubled by the mines which their assailants had run from the bottom of the moat beneath the foundations of the castle; for although these had been met by countermines, and many a furious combat had taken place in these uncanny lists, each mine meant a point to be guarded with jealous care, and was a source of weakness and anxiety; demanding exhausting sentry duty from the already over-burdened garrison.

The countess found her office of Castellan no sinecure. The motley garrison were anything but homogeneous. All manner of petty jealousies, personal and national, raged among them. The Normans were jealous of the Bretons, and the Bretons blustered about independence, boasting that they were 'no man's men;' while the Saxons hated them both, and regarded their refinements as dandyisms and their courtesies as cant; and the Normans and the Bretons both looked down upon the Saxons as savages, and gibed at their priest-bestowed knighthood; so that, on the whole, they were as much inclined to fight against each other as against the king's forces outside the walls, and sometimes actually came to blows.

However, the countess set her woman's wit to weigh these quarrelsome gentlemen against each other, and managed to do it, owing to the three-sidedness of the situation.

After all, their want of unity had its advantages, as they never 'went solid' in any direction, except under the self-evident necessity of defending their lives and the castle.

Still, at times, Emma grew very weary, and almost failed under the burden she had taken upon her slender shoulders, feeling terribly feeble and lonely and out of her depth.

Sir Hoël de St. Brice was her chiefest comfort and principal counsellor. The old knight had come to regard her with absolute veneration and the deepest affection, and in him she felt that she had a true and sincere friend.

His zeal for the earl's cause nearly equalled her own. To say that he would have given his life for it would express little, for all in the garrison were formally pledged to do that; but he had no other object in life.

Emma had sought the earliest opportunity to tell him the circumstances under which she had discovered the imprisonment of Sir Aimand de Sourdeval, and to repeat his account of the foul treatment he had met with from De Gourin.

'Unknightly!' he had said,—'from first to last unknightly. But what would you have? Can a man who sells his lance to the first bidder, without inquiry into the justice of his cause, be a true knight?' Altogether he gave evidence of shrewd indignation, but no keen surprise.

'I love not the mercenary,' he answered, 'and wish that he had not so high a command in the garrison. I know well that he had no great liking for the young Norman prudhomme, whose boyish enthusiasms were stronger than his prudence, and led him to throw taunts at Sir Alain's thick head, all the more galling that they were barbed with truth.'

But he agreed that, under the circumstances, it was best to let matters stand; De Gourin was evidently of the same opinion, and, save for a few veiled gibes at the magnanimity of the countess, made no reference to the freeing of the young knight.

Sir Aimand, for his part, had a dismal time of it, and almost wished himself back in his dungeon, securely chained by the leg.

As soon as his health began to mend, which was speedily enough, under the combined influences of good food, good air, and the sight of his lady's face, Eadgyth withdrew that last and sweetest influence.

For she was determined by no word or look of hers to tempt him to be untrue to his high standard of honour, and she felt on her own part more Saxon than ever, and judged the gulf between them impassable, save by the wreckage of the ideals of both; and therefore she deemed that to bestow her company upon him would be but cruel kindness.

So the poor knight mooned about in solitary meditation, and his returning strength made inaction a veritable purgatory to him. To hear blows going, and have no hand in giving or taking them, was truly about the cruellest torture that could have been invented for one of his order and temper in those days when Christians still thirsted for the Valhalla of the old Norsemen, wherein the immortal heroes were healed of their wounds at night that they might slay each other over again in the morning.

Again and again he was on the point of throwing his scruples to the wind, and buckling on sword and helm in defence of the generous dame who had given him his freedom so unconditionally. Again and again he restrained himself, and did penance by fasting and prayer, wishing the while that she had left him in durance, so he had escaped such doubting and searching of heart.

Nor did he find much peace in Hall. Norman, Breton, and Saxon were all against him. Gibes and jeers were his portion. They called him the 'ladies' tame tiercel,' the 'gamecock without spurs,' the 'dancing bear,' and a hundred other names suggestive of carpet-knight-errantry. Then his fists would ball and his clear-cut, high-bred face grow white with anger, though he never made reply, as he felt it an evident point of honour that, being a prisoner on parole, he might neither risk his own person, which carried value for ransom, nor seek to injure any of the garrison.

But on the eve of the assault, when the countess was holding council with Sir Hoël de St. Brice, attended only by Eadgyth, the young Norman prayed audience of her, and on its being granted strode into the chamber with curiously flashing eyes.

'I beseech thee, noble Emma, to furnish me with an helm and an hauberk, and the sharpest sword thou canst spare out of thine armoury, and I will put them to a good use in thy service,' he said, with speech that was rather too hasty to be clear.

'Hast found thy senses at last, brave sir?' demanded Sir Hoël, smiling indulgently, for he had always liked the young knight.

But Eadgyth noticed his flushed cheek and excited mien with a chill dread at her heart. Was he about to be false to the noble ideals for which he had endured so much, or—saints in Heaven forfend!—did his exaggerated love to his suzerain lead him to contemplate a baser falseness still, and so confuse his mind that he should fancy it would be virtue to betray the castle? Her cousin Leofric had said more than once, that only a woman playing Castellan would be so imprudent as to allow one holding so invidious a position as did De Sourdeval, to be free of the castle and aware of all its secrets; and though at the time she had cried shame on his mean suspicions, the words had rested in her mind with the burr-like persistency characteristic of such suggestions of evil.

The countess, however, looked at him with her frank glad eyes, and rejoiced, for she had always hoped that the time would come when he would repay her generosity with complete allegiance, and she was about to reply unconditionally, 'Ay, that will I.'

But before she could speak, Sir Aimand continued, 'I ask thee more. I want not only arms for myself, but twenty men to back me.'

Sir Hoël looked grave, and lifted his bushy white eyebrows high in astonishment.

'Pick men of whose fidelity you are assured,' Sir Aimand cried. 'Let Leofric Ealdredsson go with me. Thou knowest he has no liking for me, and is in no way in collusion with me, sith there is race hatred between us and rivalry in love.'

'Rivalry in love!' exclaimed Emma, turning quickly to Eadgyth, and the cheeks of the Saxon maiden burned scarlet under her gaze, but not more redly than those of the knight, who had exposed his jealousy unawares.

'I should not have said rivalry,' he amended hastily, 'sith I have no claim.'

Eadgyth was in a difficult position. If she made the protest her heart urged, that Leofric was her cousin and nothing more, and never could be more, she would give Sir Aimand an encouragement which was cruel. If she did not make it, she let that be believed which she imagined had no foundation in fact.

Emma saved her from need of reply.

'Upon the honour of Leofric Ealdredsson I can rely,' she said, 'whether he have cause to like or mislike thy person, fair knight. What more hast thou to ask?'

'That he, with twenty of his stout Anglo-Danes, may be put under my guidance, with instructions to hew me in sunder if I in any way show token of treachery. I can serve thee best if none know of this matter, nor the end in view, save Leofric alone. But this I will say in explanation, there is a traitor in thy camp, and I would fain foil him. I cannot fight under thy banner, noble countess, but it accords with my vow of chivalry to save thee from foul betrayal.'

'Let Leofric Ealdredsson be summoned, Sir Hoël,' said the countess.

And in the end De Sourdeval obtained his boon.

Knowing what had been granted to the Norman, and that Leofric and his stout carles would not have accepted service under him unless with some prospect of stiff work to follow, Sir Hoël was somewhat surprised to see the Anglo-Danes linger later than usual over the wassail bowl in Hall that even, seeing too that on the morrow it was certain that shrewd blows would be going, and all heads wanted clear.

Sir Alain de Gourin thought fit to rebuke them. 'For as thick skulls as your battle-axes there may boast, Childe Leofric,' he said, 'they had best have wakeful wits under them by dawn.' And he set a worthy example by leaving the revel.

His most important followers slipped after, first one and then another, but still the Vikings drank on, and Sir Hoël began to have queer doubts of the wisdom of granting the whimsical De Sourdeval control over such a crew, and determined to watch them out.