“Ha, sir squire!” exclaimed Eveille-chiens, vindictively; “you do well to remind me that I owe this White Jacket the only kind of debt which I never, by any chance, forget or fail to pay. If I take him alive I’ll have his eyes put out and his hands cut off by the wrists. By St. Remy, the Bastard of Melun shall have such revenge on the outlaw as I can inflict on his behalf.”
With such feelings, Eveille-chiens pushed on the labours of the men who, under the protection of Hornmouth’s crossbowmen and archers, were busy with the construction of a causeway by which the cavalry might pass the morass, enter the island, and charge and trample down the English patriots in a mass.
Collingham, however, offered no interruption to the operations; and on the second day the aspect of the island was such, and the silence so unbroken, that Hornmouth began to suspect that Collingham meditated some desperate achievement, or had sure intelligence that Philip de Albini and John Marshal were coming to his rescue. About the close of the third day all doubts as to the state of the camp, and the cause of no interruption having taken place, were set at rest.
It was about seven o’clock on the evening of the Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist, and the causeway having been completed, the forces of Eveille-chiens, both cavalry and infantry, were drawn up in order to make the assault. Having stationed his archers and crossbowmen on the margin of the morass to keep the enemy at bay during the passage of the causeway, Hornmouth assumed the post of danger, and led the van across the morass, and penetrated into the island. De Moreville’s squire naturally expected an obstinate and terrible resistance—the resistance of men, under a daring chief, reduced to despair, and determined to sell their lives at the dearest rate. But, to his astonishment, he encountered no opposition while passing the causeway; he entered the island without striking a blow; and penetrated to the ruins in the centre without meeting with a human being.
At first Hornmouth could hardly believe his senses, and next he suspected an ambush; but a little investigation convinced him that there was no mistake about the matter. The island was deserted. Even the anchorite was not to be found among the ruins which he had so long haunted while endeavouring to read the stars and penetrate the future. Hornmouth gave way to superstitious fright, and he felt as if his hairs were standing on end, and when Eveille-chiens came up he found the stout squire staring in blank amazement.
“By bread and salt!” exclaimed he, regaining his courage; “they are gone—vanished, every man and mother’s son of them; and I am no true Christian if this is not magic, or something worse.”
“May St. Remy defend us from the devices of the devil!” exclaimed Eveille-chiens, growing pale—“St. Remy defend us against the devil and our enemies, the tailed English! and I vow, on being restored to my own sweet land, to make a pilgrimage to his shrine, and to present two silver candlesticks and an image of wax to his church.”
CHAPTER XLV
A FRENCH ARMAMENT
LOUIS OF FRANCE, after being so roughly handled by William de Collingham and the sturdy patriots who followed that knight’s banner that he turned pale at the thought of the injury done to his dignity, embarked in haste and confusion, reached the French coast sea-sick, but in safety, and hastened, with visions of a coronation at Westminster, to the court of Paris. But the result was not quite satisfactory. Indeed, he found his royal father in no mood to grant the assistance which he required to complete the conquest of England. Philip Augustus naturally held the papal power in such dread, since the humiliating close of his quarrel with the pope about his marriage with the beautiful Agnes de Méranie, that he protested against being mixed up with the business so distinctly condemned by the holy see. However, he pointed out that, though his hands were tied, there was no particular reason why Blanche of Castile should not aid her husband to the utmost of her power, and hinted that he had no objection to furnish the means of hiring warriors and freighting ships. A word, says the proverb, is sufficient to the wise. Blanche took the hint, and—perhaps without even for the time neglecting her maternal duties to the young St. Louis, the eldest of what Fuller calls “that princely quaternion of brothers which exceeded each other in some quality: Louis the holiest, Alphonso the subtlest, Charles the stoutest, and Robert the proudest”—applied herself, with characteristic energy, to the task of fitting out an armament powerful enough to finish the work which with such high hopes her husband had boldly begun.
The prince, however, did not linger in France. Ere the truce agreed to with Pembroke had expired he was on the sea. Attacked furiously on his voyage by the ships of the Cinque Ports, he lost several of his vessels, but personally escaped all harm, and, landing at Sandwich, he, enraged at the Cinque Ports, burned that town, which enjoyed the reputation of being the first place in England at which ships were built, and then marching to Dover, he made a second attempt to take the castle. But this attempt proved as unsuccessful as the first had done, and, finding Hubert de Burgh still obstinate, Louis abandoned the enterprise, and proceeded to London, where, however, his reception was infinitely less enthusiastic than it had been on that too-memorable day of June when the citizens shouted “Chaire Basileus!” and where, indeed, in spite of Constantine Fitzarnulph, there was at work that dangerous spirit of discontent which is the parent of popular insurrections.