"Pray Lord Christ that I am with you on the morrow, wife," he said, "and fare you well!" He embraced Frija, and helped both women into the boat. Harl took up the pole.
"Farewell!" came in a deep, low chorus from the group of serfs, and, with no further words, the boat shot away into the dark. They could hear the splash of the pole and the wailing of the women, and then the darkness closed up and hid them utterly.
The men closed round Pierce. There seemed no hesitation in their movements. It was felt by every one that he must die. Despite his frantic struggles, they unbuckled his belt and dagger. Cerdic pulled down the neck of his tunic and laid bare the flesh beneath. Hyla unsheathed the dagger, trembling with joy as his enemy lay beneath him——
It was as easy as killing a cat, and they took the body and sank it in mid-stream. Then they stood upon the landing-stage speechless, huddled close together—torn by exultation and fear.
Cerdic saw that they were terrified at what had been done. "Come, friends," said he, "fall upon your knees with me, and pray the Blessed Virgin to shed her favour upon Hyla and his work to-morrow. The fish are at one black knave already, to-morrow a greater shall meet his man in hell. Our Lady and my Lords the Saints are with us; get you to praying."
In a moment a sudden flash of lightning, which leapt across the great arch of heaven, showed a group of kneeling forms, silent, with bended heads.
Soon they went stealing up the hill again, but not before Gurth had delivered himself of a grim, though practical pleasantry. "I'll have the divell's fish," he said, and with that he slung them over his shoulder, for they were threaded upon a string.
The jongleur in the hall played upon his crowth, and sang them Serventes, Lays, and songs of battle. Between each song he rested his fiddle upon the floor and drank a draught of morat, till his lips and chin were all purple with the mulberry juice. Then he would say that he would give them a little something which dealt with the great surquedy and outrecuidance of a certain baron, the son of a lady of ill-fame, and how, being in his cups, this man was minded to go up in fight against a rock. So, forthwith, the hero got him up on his destrier and ran full tilt against the rock. "Then," the jongleur would conclude in quite the approved modern music-hall style, "the sward was all besprent with what remained." Vulgar wit then was own brother to coarse wit to-day, and a vulgar fool in the twelfth century differed but little from a vulgar fool in the nineteenth.
A broad grin sat solid upon the faces of the soldiers. When the jongleur began to sing little catches in couplets, plucking the string of his crowth the while for accompaniment, they nudged each other with delight at each coarse suggestion. They were exactly like a group of little foolish boys in the fourth form of a public school, just initiated into the newness of cheap wit, whispering ancient rhymes to each other.