It appears to have been sound advice, and such as the count ought to have adopted, for his superiority in cavalry would have given him a great advantage in the country; but the very fact of its coming from Fitzwalter and Winchester made it distasteful to the French.
“No,” replied De Perche, who, like all Prince Louis’s captains, treated his Anglo-Norman allies cavalierly; “you have reckoned them according to your own judgment and given your opinion; but I must go forth and count them in the French fashion. Besides, I hardly deem the English would be mad enough to attack us in a walled town.”
“No more than stags would dream of attacking lions,” added the Marshal of France, jeeringly.
“Their fate would be sealed,” said the Castellan of Arras.
However, that they might judge for themselves as to the extent of the danger to which they were exposed, the count and his French knights and the marshal and the castellan rode forth and surveyed Pembroke’s army as horsemen and footmen came dauntlessly on, the sun shining on their weapons and their armour. Indeed, the spectacle was not calculated to increase De Perche’s confidence of conquering. Mistaking the baggage and the standards carried by the men who guarded it for a second army, he formed a very erroneous notion of the numbers coming against him, and spurred back to the city a sadder if not a wiser man than he had left it.
And now the French and Anglo-Normans held a hurried council of war, and it was proposed to divide their forces, so that while one party was defending the gates and walls to prevent the English entering the city, the other party should continue to besiege the castle and keep the garrison in check. The count’s friends took different views as to the policy of such a course. Some approved of the plan; others condemned it as not suited to the emergency. But there was no time left for argument, and the proposal was hastily adopted as the best thing that could be done under the circumstances.
And having in this manner decided on the course to be followed, the leaders repaired each to the post assigned to him and prepared for action—one party to guard the gates and walls, the other to direct their efforts against the castle. But scarcely had they taken their places and encouraged their men by word and gesture to do their duty boldly, when both from French and Anglo-Normans rose a loud yell, followed by a long wail, as of men in mortal agony, and ere this died away Pembroke’s trumpets were sounding and his men were thundering at the gates, and the conflict which was to render that May Saturday memorable had begun in earnest, the fate of England trembling in the balance.
CHAPTER XLIX
COLLINGHAM’S RAVENS
IT has been before stated that William de Collingham had a very strong reason for forming his camp of refuge where he did form it—on the islet in the heart of a forest in Sussex, and near the sea-coast. His adventure at Chas-Chateil had very forcibly reminded the stout knight that connected with the ruins tenanted by the anchorite at the islet was a secret passage formed by the hand of man in the earlier days of England’s history, and leading to a precipitous little vale in the wood, at the distance of half-a-mile. This passage was not, indeed, in the best condition, the ground having in some places fallen in, so as almost to block it up; but the knight, on examining it carefully, saw that with a little labour it might be rendered passable without inconvenience, and not only give his followers a great advantage over their foes in the partisan warfare which he intended to carry on, but afford them the means of a secret retreat in case of being threatened by any overwhelming force.
In both respects the subterranean passage served his purpose admirably. By means of it, even when the islet was invested, Oliver Icingla was enabled to sally forth on such nocturnal expeditions as that during which he entered the tent of Eveille-chiens, and seized that leader’s banner, the display of which gave the foreigners an idea that preternatural influences were at work against them; and by means of it, when the islet was invested by Eveille-chiens and Ralph Hornmouth with such a body of troops that resistance would have been hopeless, Collingham, while his enemies were occupied with the construction of the causeway, gradually withdrew his whole force, and left his camp the solitude which, to their amazement, the French captain and the English squire found it when they entered.