"There is scarcely enough money to pay the Brabanters, and they will mutiny if kept short: that raid last night was a god-send," said Brian to himself.
Osric arrived. The Baron felt lighter of heart when the youth he loved was with him. It was another case of Saul and David. And furthermore, the likeness was not a superficial one. Often did Osric touch the harp, and sing the lays of love and war to his patron, for so much had he learned of his grandsire.
They talked of the previous evening's adventures, and Brian was delighted to draw Osric out, and to hear him express sentiments so entirely at variance with his antecedents, as he did under the Baron's deft questions.
So they continued talking until the scrivener returned, and then the Baron asked impatiently—
"Well, man! and what does the mayor say?"
"That their resources are exhausted, and that you are very much in their debt already."
The reader need not marvel at this bold answer. Brian dared not use violence to his own burghers; it would have been killing the goose who laid the golden eggs. In our men of commerce began the first germs of English liberty. Men would sometimes yield to all other kinds of violence, but the freemen of the towns, even amidst the wild barons of Germany, held their own; and so did the burgesses of Wallingford: they had their charter signed and sealed by Brian, and ratified by Henry the First.
"The greedy caitiffs," he said; "well, we must go and see the dungeons. Osric, come with me."
Osric had seldom been permitted to do this before. He had only once or twice been "down below." Perhaps Brian had feared to shock him, and now thought him seasoned, as indeed he seemed to be the night before, and in his talk that day.