All looked each at the other, and were silent.
“You are too late, young lord,” said Azer.
“Too late?”
“The Norman”—Azer called him what most men called him then—“has given it to a man of Gilbert of Ghent’s,—his butler, groom, cook, for aught I know.”
“To Gilbert’s man? And my mother?”
“God help your mother, and your young brother, too. We only know that three days ago some five-and-twenty French marched into the place.”
“And you did not stop them?”
“Young sir, who are we to stop an army? We have enough to keep our own. Gilbert, let alone the villain Ivo of Spalding, can send a hundred men down on us in four-and-twenty hours.”
“Then I,” said Hereward in a voice of thunder, “will find the way to send two hundred down on him”; and turning his horse from the gate, he rode away furiously towards Bourne.
He turned back as suddenly, and galloped into the field.