“To burn Ely over the monks’ heads. Men! Get bogwood out of yon cottage, make yourselves torches, and onward!”
Then rose a babel of questions, which Torfrida answered as she could. But she had nothing to tell. “Clerks’ cunning,” she said bitterly, “was an overmatch for woman’s wit.” She had sent out a spy: but he had not returned till an hour since. Then he came back breathless, with the news that the French army was on the march from Cambridge, and that, as he came over the water at Alrech, he found a party of French knights in the fort on the Ely side, talking peaceably with the monks on guard.
She had run up to the borough hill,—which men call Cherry Hill at this day,—and one look to the northeast had shown her the river swarming with ships. She had rushed home, put on men’s clothes, hid a few jewels in her bosom, saddled Swallow, and ridden for her life thither.
“And King Ranald?”
He and his men had gone desperately out towards Haddenham, with what English they could muster; but all were in confusion. Some were getting the women and children into boats, to hide them in the reeds. Others battering the minster gates, vowing vengeance on the monks.
“Then Ranald will be cut off! Alas for the day that ever brought his brave heart hither!”
And when the men heard that, a yell of fury and despair burst from all throats.
Should they go back to their boats?
“No! onward,” cried Hereward. “Revenge first, and safety after. Let us leave nothing for the accursed Frenchmen but smoking ruins, and then gather our comrades, and cut our way back to the north.”
“Good counsel,” cried Winter. “We know the roads, and they do not; and in such a dark night as is coming, we can march out of the island without their being able to follow us a mile.”