The Siege of Norwich Castle: A story of the last struggle against the Conqueror

by M. M. Blake

'Liar!' hissed the prisoner between his set teeth.

Emma turned with a start to face Sir Alain de Gourin, his cheeks purple with passion, and his quivering hand on the hilt of his miséricorde. The countess thought it politic to ignore his speech, although every word had reached her ears.

'Sir Alain!' she exclaimed, simulating pleasure at his appearance. 'Thy coming is most opportune. I was about to send a messenger to thee. Give orders forthwith that the irons be struck from the limbs of this worthy knight without delay. He hath been shrewdly misunderstood, and my will is that he be set free!'

She looked the mercenary hardily in the face as she gave him her command, and the villain quailed. He saw that he had come too late to prevent her from hearing Sir Aimand's statement of the case.

He accepted the oblivion in which she had buried his first insulting speech, and took an entirely different tone. 'Thy will is law, noble countess,' he said obsequiously, and with a low bow.

Emma did not retire to rest until she knew that the knight was comfortably lodged in the state apartments of the castle.

The Breton had been completely taken by surprise. He had imposed upon the earl with a story which the latter, in the excitement attendant upon his ambitious enterprise, had neglected to verify, and it had never entered his head that the countess would trouble herself about the matter. He supposed that the earl himself had at least spoken to her of Sir Aimand as a culprit, and that she was entirely ignorant of his presence as a prisoner in the castle; as she had been, until the strange impulse which came to her to have a mass said for him, caused her to name him to the chaplain.

Even in case of her finding the matter out and wishing to probe it, he had an ingenious story ready, wherewith to put her off the scent.

But the suddenness with which she had taken matters into her own hands, and had visited the prisoner and heard his version of the facts, quite overcame the somewhat clumsy wit of the Breton.

His first impulse, as usual, had been to bluster, but the firmness with which the countess confronted him had fairly cowed him for the moment, as he knew that he would have to justify himself, and to eat a good many of his words before Sir Hoël and the Norman knights of the garrison, to whom he had accounted for De Sourdeval's absence by representing that he had been sent on an embassy by the earl.