As her thoughts wandered back to her brief meeting with him two years before, she wrote and dispatched her reply to Norman of Torn.
In the great hall that night as the King’s party sat at supper, Philip of France, addressing Henry, said:
“And who thinkest thou, My Lord King, rode by my side to Battel today, that I might not be set upon by knaves upon the highway?”
“Some of our good friends from Kent?” asked the King.
“Nay, it was a man upon whose head Your Majesty has placed a price, Norman of Torn; and if all of your English highwaymen be as courteous and pleasant gentlemen as he, I shall ride always alone and unarmed through your realm that I may add to my list of pleasant acquaintances.”
“The Devil of Torn?” asked Henry, incredulously. “Some one be hoaxing you.”
“Nay, Your Majesty, I think not,” replied Philip, “for he was indeed a grim and mighty man, and at his back rode as ferocious and awe-inspiring a pack as ever I beheld outside a prison; fully a thousand strong they rode. They be camped not far without the city now.”
“My Lord,” said Henry, turning to Simon de Montfort, “be it not time that England were rid of this devil’s spawn and his hellish brood? Though I presume,” he added, a sarcastic sneer upon his lip, “that it may prove embarrassing for My Lord Earl of Leicester to turn upon his companion in arms.”
“I owe him nothing,” returned the Earl haughtily, “by his own word.”
“You owe him victory at Lewes,” snapped the King. “It were indeed a sad commentary upon the sincerity of our loyalty-professing lieges who turned their arms against our royal person, ‘to save him from the treachery of his false advisers,’ that they called upon a cutthroat outlaw with a price upon his head to aid them in their ‘righteous cause’.”