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 Hoel 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 Hoel 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 Hoel,' 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 Hoel?' 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 Hoel.
'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 Hoel. '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 Hoel, 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.