When the door gave way they were met in the dark entry by a virago with a hatchet, none other than Bridget, the smith’s wife, who had stormed against Denise. The men fell back from her, but Isoult showed herself more valiant, and quite a match for the lady.
“Make way, Gammer Goodbody,” she said, “make way for the red gown.”
Bridget answered her with an oath, and a word that was too familiar to Isoult’s ears.
The little woman’s black eyes sparkled with spite.
“Here is a respectable slut,” she said, “who has not learnt to kiss the foot of a lady.”
And she cut Bridget across the forearm with her knife, so that the smith’s wife dropped her hatchet.
Gaillard sent his men in, and they overpowered the woman. But Isoult would not let them harm her. Her own spirit of wickedness was equal to taming the big shrew.
She made them cut off Bridget’s hair, dress her in some of her man’s clothes, tie a lamb’s skin under her chin, and truss her with her hands fastened to her ankles. Then while she drank wine with Gaillard and made merry, seated on a bench, her red gown the colour of freshly shed blood, she had Bridget rolled across the floor and propped up near her like a sick duck. Isoult made a mock of the smith’s wife that night because of the thing she had called her, asking her where her marriage lines were, and why her man had not come home. Sometimes she threw the dregs from her ale horn into Bridget’s face, and called her a she-goat and a rabbit. Bridget still had the courage to curse back again, though her tongue was less clever than Isoult’s. But when Isoult took a burning stick from the fire, and began to singe Dame Bridget’s stockings, the woman took to screaming, and pleaded for pity.
So Dom Silvius let the devil loose in Battle, and the memory of that night lingered for many a long day.
As for Isoult’s comrade Marpasse, she and Denise had come to Grinstead amid the woods, and were lodged in the house of a woman who fed swine and kept a wayside inn. At Grinstead they heard the news that Earl Simon and the Barons’ host had left London with fifteen thousand burghers to swell their ranks, and were on the march to deal with the King. The army would pass not far from Grinstead, so said the woman of the inn, and Marpasse and Denise took counsel together and put their plans in order.