The king's men were endeavouring to throw a wooden bridge across the ditch. One end was furnished with wheels, the other with huge grappling-irons, which they strove to make fast in the vallum.
Watching them stood Leofric Ealdredsson, who, on the night before, when Sir Alain de Gourin had been sneering at the primitive Saxon earthworks, had said, with a laugh and a fierce gleam in his eyes, 'Let me defend them; I am used to the rude English fashions.' A band of his terrible house-carles, armed with their great battle-axes, and long of hair and large of limb, waited his orders with the air of bloodhounds in a leash straining at their collars.
From a loophole on the southern side of the keep, lighting the gallery which runs within the walls on a level with the great entrance, the countess and her bower-maiden Eadgyth watched the strife.
Eadgyth had been present in the council-chamber during the audience of Robert Malet. 'Thou wast grand, Emma,' she was saying to her lady and friend. 'Thou wast so strong and courageous, while, to say sooth, my own heart was beating like an armourer's hammer.'
'Thou art a strange child, my Eadgyth,' said Emma affectionately, well pleased with the admission of the English maiden.
A wilder shout from the besiegers than any preceding broke their converse, and for some moments each watched the progress of the fight in breathless silence.
For the assailants had established their bridge against the vallum, and over it the attacking knights charged in a body, led by Robert Malet in person, his high crest topping them all, and by sheer weight of horse and harness they drave down the barricades and pressed in, hewing in sunder all before them.
Eadgyth gave a shrill scream and threw her arms wildly round the countess, who stood motionless, with eyes dilated and heaving breast.
Then rang out the wild Norse war-cry, 'Ahoi! ahoi!' And Leofric and his fierce carles sprang forward like tigers; and the flash and crash of their great axes smote eye and ear, while more than one knightly saddle was emptied, more than one riderless destrier ran neighing around the enclosure; more than one mailed warrior, impervious to arrows and quarrels, was cloven through his helm and lay lifeless on the ground.
The Anglo-Danes laughed in their yellow beards, and vigorously improved their advantage, so that in a few moments the knights were forced back beyond the line of the barricades, some getting back across the bridge, some falling into the water.