“It is their wont when there is work to be done.”
“By Saint Paul!” quoth Sir Nigel, “it is in my mind that they come too late, for I cannot see how we are to come down from this tower.”
“There they come, the hearts of gold!” cried Aylward. “See, they move out from the shadow. Now they cross the meadow. They are on the further side of the moat. Hola camarades, hola! Johnston, Eccles, Cooke, Harward, Bligh! Would ye see a fair lady and two gallant knights done foully to death?”
“Who is there?” shouted a deep voice from below. “Who is this who speaks with an English tongue?”
“It is I, old lad. It is Sam Aylward of the Company; and here is your captain, Sir Nigel Loring, and four others, all laid out to be grilled like an Easterling's herrings.”
“Curse me if I did not think that it was the style of speech of old Samkin Aylward,” said the voice, amid a buzz from the ranks. “Wherever there are knocks going there is Sammy in the heart of it. But who are these ill-faced rogues who block the path? To your kennels, canaille! What! you dare look us in the eyes? Out swords, lads, and give them the flat of them! Waste not your shafts upon such runagate knaves.”
There was little fight left in the peasants, however, still dazed by the explosion, amazed at their own losses and disheartened by the arrival of the disciplined archers. In a very few minutes they were in full flight for their brushwood homes, leaving the morning sun to rise upon a blackened and blood-stained ruin, where it had left the night before the magnificent castle of the Seneschal of Auvergne. Already the white lines in the east were deepening into pink as the archers gathered round the keep and took counsel how to rescue the survivors.
“Had we a rope,” said Alleyne, “there is one side which is not yet on fire, down which we might slip.”
“But how to get a rope?”
“It is an old trick,” quoth Aylward. “Hola! Johnston, cast me up a rope, even as you did at Maupertuis in the war time.”