“What seek you here, sir citizen?” asked she, with a gesture and in a tone before which most men, under the circumstances, would have quailed.
“Demoiselle,” answered Fitzarnulph with equal pride, “it is vain to assume such airs at the stage at which matters have arrived; vainer still to deem that I, Constantine Fitzarnulph, am likely to be daunted by a haughty tone and a frowning brow. I therefore answer frankly—it is you I seek. You have treated me with a scorn to which I am but little accustomed; however, of that anon. You are at length in my power, once and for ever, so prepare to go hence. My barge awaits you at the stairs to convey you to a place of safety. Nay, frown not; I say it is vain; for, come what may, by the blood of St. Thomas! ere to-morrow’s sun is high in the heavens, you shall stand at the altar as Fitzarnulph’s bride, and women neither less fair nor less exalted in rank than yourself will envy your lot. I have said.”
Scorn, amazement, terror, succeeded each other rapidly in the face of Beatrix de Moreville as Fitzarnulph spoke, and she was nerving herself to reply when he advanced and seized her arm, as if to bear her off as his prey; but she clung so tenaciously to Dame Waledger, who was literally speechless with affright, that he found all his efforts to separate them in vain. Suddenly he relaxed his grasp.
“Maiden,” said he, looking earnestly into her face, “you are fighting against fate, and against a destiny you can no more avoid than you can the death which comes to all flesh. You struggle in vain. It is not my wont to be baffled, as the world well knows, and will yet know better. Loath am I to use force, but, since you make it necessary, I needs must. Below are twenty men, who, if I said the word, would bring me the head of the pope or the caliph. One sound of this, and they come to my aid;” and he pointed to a silver whistle that hung at his belt.
De Moreville’s daughter, retreating behind Dame Waledger, gazed with alarm at the citizen, but did not venture to speak. It seemed that her stock of courage was exhausted. Fitzarnulph appeared to hesitate. After a moment’s pause, however, he took the whistle and sounded it loudly. As he did so, voices were heard as if in altercation below; steps as of persons ascending, and the ring of steel on the stone stairs, succeeded; and then there entered, not the twenty desperadoes, but Oliver Icingla, with his spurs of gold on his heels and his trusty sword in his hand, just as he had jumped from his good steed Ayoub.
De Moreville’s daughter uttered an exclamation of rapturous surprise, and darted forward to throw herself on the young knight’s protection. Fitzarnulph stood as much like an image of stone as if the heir of the Icinglas had brought the Gorgon’s head in his hand.
CHAPTER LXI
AN OFFERING TO THE WINDS
THE sudden appearance of Oliver Icingla changed the aspect of affairs so completely that Constantine Fitzarnulph could not but curse the folly which had placed him in a position so thoroughly perplexing as that in which he found himself. He would have felt relieved if Oliver had burst into one of the brief but violent rages in which, like most men of Anglo-Saxon race, the Icingla frequently indulged. But Oliver was perfectly calm, treated Fitzarnulph as a madman not responsible for his actions, and with cool contempt showed the citizen the door, and expressed a hope that his kinsfolk would take better care of him in future.
Fretting with mortification, boiling with rage, and uttering bitter threats, Fitzarnulph departed to join the mob; but he discovered that they were fast dispersing, owing to intelligence that Falco, having mustered his men, was mounting to put them to the sword; and, making for the Thames, he entered his barge, for which a fairer freight had been intended, and was rowed rapidly down the river to his house in the city. Fitzarnulph, wearied with the fatigues of the day, retired to rest, but for many hours sleep did not visit his pillow. He was of all men the most wretched. Not only were his reflections bitter, but he had a vague presentiment of coming danger which he in vain endeavoured to banish. At last, as day was breaking, he fell asleep; but his repose was disturbed by feverish dreams, in which the Abbot of Westminster, and the abbot’s steward, and Oliver Icingla, and Beatrix de Moreville figured prominently; and when he was roused by one of his domestics about ten o’clock, it was to inform him that the mayor had summoned him to the Tower on urgent business.
Fitzarnulph was brave, but could not feel otherwise than alarmed at this summons, and he even thought of flight as he recalled the mayor’s ominous warning as to the fate of William Fitzosbert. But, he rose, dressed hastily, and, confident in his powers of browbeating and in his influence with the commonalty and desperadoes of London, he manned himself with dauntless air, and was soon in the great hall of the Tower—that great hall in which Oliver Icingla was presented as a hostage to King John, at that monarch’s Christmas feast of 1214. Here Fitzarnulph found not only the mayor, and aldermen, and many of the chief citizens, but no less important a personage than Hubert de Burgh, Justiciary of England, with Falco in his company. Fitzarnulph had great difficulty in bearing himself with his wonted dignity, but when he observed that his fellow-citizens were inclined to shun him, his spirit of defiance rose, and he resolved to brave the business out and take the consequences, let them be what they might. It was a resolution of which he was to repent, but to repent when too late.