Now Clym saw that matters were becoming desperate, and time was passing too quickly, so he adopted a more violent tone. “Ah, rascal, scoundrel, madman!” quoth he. “If we be delayed here any longer thou shalt be hanged for a false thief! To keep the king’s messengers waiting thus! Canst thou not see the king’s seal? Canst thou not read the address of the royal letter? Ah, blockhead, thou shalt dearly abide this delay when my lord knows thereof.”
Thus speaking, he flourished the forged letter, with its false seal, in the porter’s face; and the man, seeing the seal and the writing, believed what was told him. Reverently he took off his hood and bent the knee to the king’s messengers, for whom he opened wide the gates, and they entered, walking warily.
They Keep the Gates
“At last we are within Carlisle walls, and glad thereof are we,” said Adam Bell, “but when and how we shall go out again Christ only knows, who harrowed Hell and brought out its prisoners.”
“Now if we had the keys ourselves we should have a good chance of life,” said Clym, “for then we could go in and out at our own will.” “Let us call the warder,” said Adam. When he came running at their call both the yeomen sprang upon him, flung him to the ground, bound him hand and foot, and cast him into a dark cell, taking his bunch of keys from his girdle. Adam laughed and shook the heavy keys. “Now I am gate-ward of merry Carlisle. See, here are my keys. I think I shall be the worst warder they have had for three hundred years. Let us bend our bows and hold our arrows ready, and walk into the town to deliver our brother.”
The Fight in the Market-place
When they came to the market-place they found a dense crowd of sympathizers watching pityingly the hangman’s cart, in which lay William of Cloudeslee, bound hand and foot, with a rope round his neck. The sheriff and the justice stood near the gallows, and Cloudeslee would have been hanged already, but that the sheriff was hiring a man to measure the outlaw for his grave. “You shall have the dead man’s clothes, good fellow, if you make his grave,” said he.
Cloudeslee’s courage was still undaunted. “I have seen as great a marvel ere now,” quoth he, “as that a man who digs a grave for another may lie in it himself, in as short a time as from now to prime.”
“You speak proudly, my fine fellow, but hanged you shall be, if I do it with my own hand,” retorted the sheriff furiously.