Piers Major gently withdrew the bolt from the wound and held it up to view. Its message was plain to all, for none save the Doomsmen feathered their arrows with the plume of the gray goose. Only now the quills were stained to a darker hue.
"It is her blood," he said, and the shaft of polished hickory snapped like a straw between his fingers. "Her blood! and of Doom shall we require it." And at that all the people shouted and then stood with uncovered heads, while the young men bore away the body of Oxenford's daughter on their locked shields and gave it to her mother.
That night Constans rode out from Deepdene at the head of twenty picked men, leading them to the secret place where he had stored the guns and ammunition which he had brought from Doom. Two days of practice with the unfamiliar weapons, and on the morning of the third the little squad, reinforced by a company of two hundred men-at-arms, set out upon the northern road.
Towards noon they passed through Croye. It had been their intention to stop here for the mid-day meal, but none cared to propose a halt after entering this strange city of silence. Ordinarily the central square would have been filled with a voluble, chaffering crowd, it being a market-day; now there was not a living thing to be seen, not even a hog wallowing in the kennel nor a buzzard about the butcher-stalls. Yet there were no traces of fire and sword, the houses had suffered no violence, and stood there barred and shuttered as though it were still the middle watch of the night.
"What think you?" said Piers Major to Constans. "Is it the plague?"
"No, or there would be fires burning in the streets and yellow crosses chalked upon the door-lintels. Those who keep so close behind their bolts and bars are living people, hale and strong as ourselves. But, assuredly, some great fear has been put upon them. Perhaps we shall know more as we go on."
The answer to the riddle was given as they turned the corner by Messer Hugolin's house. The strong-room on the ground-floor stood empty and despoiled of its treasures, yet the gold and silver had not been carried away, but lay scattered about in the filth of the street, as though utterly contemned by the marauders.
And there, hanging from a cross-bar of the broken window, was the body of Messer Hugolin, Councillor Primus of Croye, dressed in his scarlet robes of office, and with a great gold chain about his neck. His head was bowed upon his breast, so that the face was not visible, and for this indulgence Constans gave inward thanks.