CHAPTER XXIII.
HOW OLIVER DIED.
But there was little time for asking questions and making inquiries, or for celebrating the exploits of heroes, Norman or Anglo-Dane.
The morning light was creeping up the east, and the chirp and twitter of wakening sparrows was the signal for the battering-rams and pickers to commence their ominous clatter.
The attack was made at several points simultaneously; and all the strength of the garrison, weakened as it was by the losses of a month of strife, was needed on the walls.
From every loophole the archers and slingers aimed whizzing arrows and hurtling stones upon the columns of the assailants, and from between the merlons great sacks of wool and horsehair were suspended to protect the walls from the battering-rams, while huge logs of timber were hurled upon the pickers. Molten lead and boiling water was poured down upon the heads of the besiegers like a veritable hell-rain.
But for all their efforts the assault made progress. In two distinct places the walls were so battered that horsemen could have ridden through the breach.
The garrison did their best to throw up earthworks inside the broken walls, and fought valiantly to defend them, sallying forth at intervals with the impetus of men who felt their case desperate.
But the besiegers fought with fury also. They were weary of dallying week after week before the walls of a castle which was under the command of a woman, and were determined to get the mastery, if energy and valour could accomplish it.
The countess, mounting the battlements of the keep one day, that she might see for herself the working of the mighty engines which were plied against her stronghold, had seen Earl William de Warrenne and Robert Malet standing together in one of the wooden towers already described. As she bent forward to look below, a stone from a petronel struck the wall not far beneath her, and the fragments and dust flew into her face and upon the wall on which her hand had rested.