“Free those children!” said Hugh to the man with whom he had spoken, a fat fellow, with rolling, bloodshot eyes.
“Get you to hell, stranger,” he answered, “or we’ll throw you on the fire also as a Jew in knight’s dress.”
“Free those children!” said Hugh again in a terrible voice, “or I send you before them. Be warned! I speak truth.”
“Be you warned, stranger, for I speak truth also,” replied the man, mimicking him. “Now friends,” he added, “tuck up the devil’s brats in their warm bed.”
They were his last words, for Hugh thrust with his sword and down he went.
Now a furious clamour arose. The mob snatched up burning staves, bludgeons, knives or whatever they had at hand, and prepared to kill the three. Without waiting for orders, Dick began to shoot. David, a bold young man, rushed at one of the most violent and stabbed him, and Hugh, who had leapt from his horse, set himself back to back with the other two. Thrice Dick shot, and at the third deadly arrow these drunken fellows grew sober enough to understand that they wished no more of them.
Suddenly, acting on a common impulse, they fled away, every one, only leaving behind them those who had fallen beneath the arrows and the sword. But some who were so full of wine that they could not run, tumbled headlong and lay there helpless.
“Woman,” said Hugh when they had departed, “your husband is lost, but you and your children are saved. Now go your ways and thank whatever God you worship for His small mercies.”
“Alas! Sir Knight,” the poor creature, a still young and not unhandsome Jewess, wailed in answer, “whither shall I go? If I return to that town those Christian men will surely murder me and my children as they have already murdered my husband. Kill us now by the sword or the bow—it will be a kindness—but leave us not here to be tortured by the Christian men according to their fashion with us poor Jews.”
“Are you willing to go to Avignon?” asked Hugh, after thinking awhile.