She shook from head to foot with a shudder of dread, as she threw herself upon her knees before the altar; but the tears she had so long repressed would not now come to her relief. Dry-eyed, with a dull, persistent pain at her heart that made each breath a sigh, she stretched up her arms in mute supplication to the Help of the helpless for aid.
[3] Some idea of the arrangement here described is given by the figure of the ruins of Hedingham Castle in Strutt: Manners and Customs of the English, vol. i. plate xxix.
CHAPTER XIII.
ST. NICHOLAS FOR GUADER!
The original plan of campaign drawn out by the Earls of East Anglia and Hereford had been sadly marred by the defection of Waltheof, whose counties of Huntingdon and Northampton lay between them, so that, instead of being a bond of union, they had now become adverse territory.
With Waltheof assisting them, only Worcestershire and Warwickshire would have divided them, but since he had left them in the lurch, they must needs fight half across England to effect a junction. They had this comfort, however, that Waltheof had left the country in order to make his peace with the king, and would not personally encounter them, while their positions at the extremes of east and west exposed any force attacking either of them to be itself attacked in the rear by the other. Further, the unsettled state of the Welsh border, and the readiness of the Celts to seize any excuse for invasion, rendered Hereford's movement doubly formidable for the king's lieutenants.
De Guader hoped that, for this reason, the main force of the opponents might be turned towards Hereford, and that he might be upon them before they were aware that he had taken the field. The hope proved delusive.
When he reached his manors at Swaffham, of which place he was lord, he found that the royal army was almost upon him, and that he must give battle there and then.