They set up that tent on the eleventh of June, and were two days arranging the banquet that there was given by the Young Lovell. Many fair ladies came from Durham and Morpeth and the Castles around, and cooks came, and scullions and servers, for those knights and esquires lent to the Young Lovell their pages, that they might go to all the places around and deliver his invitations. Those ladies might all sleep in that Castle, for by that time he had bought for it, out of the gold that Richard Bek had sent him, furniture, hangings, beds a many and all such silken stuffs as should make it fair. This he did to be an honour to his mother when she came there.
So all those esquires and knights, and the ladies and the Lady Margaret, and the Young Lovell sat to take their dinner in the silken tent. That banquet began at noon, and at seven in the evening they still sat at the board. Five courses that meal had, each of sixty dishes, each dish being different, so that it was agreed that such a banquet had never been given in those parts, unless it was one that the Earl of Warwick gave upon the occasion of the marriage of his daughter. The sides of that tent were held up upon gilded staves, for it was very hot and breathless weather, so that many men said a storm must soon come. The haze of heat ran all across that champaign country; the high banks of the river were all clothed with green and whitened here and there with elder. The men-at-arms marched before them in shining steel; the bowmen in green, each with the badge of the esquire or knight that he served upon his shoulder; and the bondsmen, having each a little target, a great sword, and a very tall pike with a hook at its end. Upon these pikes they could set torches the better to put fire upon roofs or in at the upper windows of peel towers. So, before their eyes, the bowmen set up targets and shot at them for their entertainment, and they passed these hot hours very joyously. When the cool of the evening was come, the Young Lovell took Sir Matthew Grey apart into a grove beside the river.
He told that knight very carefully how he would have him dispose the men that should be under his command, for he should not see those men again before they met victoriously in the Castle. Sir Matthew Grey listened to him and said that that was a very good scheme and he would observe it carefully. So, just as the young moon set, Sir Matthew Grey with all the men-at-arms, all the bowmen and fifty of the rievers, making in all two hundred and fifty men, having with him all the knights and esquires as well as the Young Lovell's most trusted esquire, Cressingham, that knew very well the ways into Castle Lovell—all rode over the whiteness of the river at the ford and were lost beneath the light of the stars. Then such of the ladies as would sleep at Castle Cramlin went into it; the others had already ridden away with their attendants. The cooks and scullions and serving men began to take down that great silken tent, and the men-at-arms that remained struck those that had sheltered their former comrades. The Young Lovell begged the Lady Margaret very courteously that she would walk with him in the grove of the river where he had talked with Sir Matthew Grey. The white small moon looked in on them through the branches; the river ran very swiftly.
There walking, he told once more to that lady very carefully his plan for the taking of Castle Lovell, for it was such things that she heard of more willingly than of any others. Sieges, tourneys, journeys, feats of arms and dangerous quests, of these she was never tired of talking; she loved them better than putting on the newest hood made after a Queen's model of France.
This plan for the taking of Castle Lovell was as follows, and it was to get under way at the hour of five on the sixteenth day of June —— that was to say, in three days' time. There were three entries to be made into that Castle within five minutes, one through the great gate that was beneath the tower called Wanshot: one through the passage coming up beneath the flagstones in the men's kitchen that was built into the wall between the towers Constance and de Insula; the third was to take place from the White Tower over the little drawbridge that connected that hold with the Castle.
The first entry, that through the great gate, was to be conducted by the Young Lovell's esquire Cressingham that well knew the ways into the Castle. This was a very dangerous enterprise, or one with no danger at all as it turned out. Besides the esquire Cressingham there were to be engaged upon it four young knights greedy of glory—Sir Michael Ridley, Sir Thomas Eure, the Lady Margaret's cousin, Sir Hugh Widdrington, and Sir Edward Riddell of Felton. It was in this way. There were usually five guards at that great gate, four to man the meurtrières and one to go to the grille; the space there was scarcely sufficient for more, nor were more necessary, so strongly was the gate protected from above by machicolations, stone balls and bowmen. So there were usually no more than five men there. Now those four knights, under the command of the esquire Cressingham, covering their armour completely with peasants' clothes and cloaks, should go up to that gate in the quiet of the morning with sacks on their backs. In these sacks they should have a good store of last year's walnuts and apples—though it was difficult enough to find these in June, yet some they had found that had ripened very late the year before. So these pretending peasants should say that they had heard that there was a great dearth of agreeable meats in that Castle, and that they were come with some fruits for sale from the neighbourhood of Sunderland. Then, very surely, those guards would desire to see those fruits, for it was certain that they all in the Castle were thirsting for such things. The false peasants should make to open a sack, and it would be a very easy thing to let the contents of one whole one fall to the ground and run rolling here and there. Very surely, too, then those guards would bend down to pick up those fruits and nuts, for it is not in human nature to withstand such a temptation.
The four knights and the esquire Cressingham should have their daggers privily ready under their cloaks and so they might very easily stab each of those guards in the back of the neck, and if they did that with skill they might slay them so peaceably that they would speak never a word. It was in that way that the Spaniards won the city of Amiens from the French a little later.
If then those guards died without tumult the esquire Cressingham should go quietly to the within-side of the gateway and wave a little cloth up to those on the White Tower. If, on the other hand, they make a noise, that outcry in itself should serve for a signal. The danger of this enterprise was this, that if the Castle was at all diligently guarded there would be in the chamber above that gate a great company of archers under a captain, and if those guards should make an outcry the archers might very easily come down and work some mischief to those knights. Moreover, the herse or portcullis was worked from that upper chamber by means of pulleys and chains. Thus the archers there if they knew what was passing below might let down that portcullis and thus not only should they catch those knights like rats in a trap, but they should prevent others entering in.
To guard against this the Young Lovell gave the following directions: In the first place, as soon as those guards were over-mastered or slain, one of the knights should close the door that let men down from the upper chamber. A very strong door it was, at the bottom of narrow steps, so that it would be no easy task to break through it. Thus, if those archers desired to come at those knights they must run along the battlements and down by the steps of the tower called de Insula, and that would take time. As for the portcullis, there was across the great gate a very strong and stout balk of wood, running in bolts. This they should take out and set upwards in the slots down through which the herse descended. Once that was there there should be no closing that way. This the Young Lovell knew very well, for once when he had been a boy he had done it out of devilment to plague the captain of the archers.
Upon the sign from the esquire Cressingham, or upon hearing a tumult in the gate house, the Young Lovell, from the top of the White Tower, should fire cannon shots into that Castle, and the firing of those shots should serve a double purpose. In the first place they should be for a signal to all the others to go forward; in the second, they should serve to frighten and distract the archers in that upper chamber if that were necessary.