I listened in astonishment, and an air of doubt must have shone out from my innocent eyes, that never knew to hide the thought within.
"Wouldst thou have proof of this that I say, and know how even to-day this serpent in our island-grass bites at the heel of princely authority?" the abbot asked.
"Indeed, Father, I would. His words to me so frank, his description of great men so just—his——" I was about to be fervent indeed in the praise of my new-found friend. Abbot Michael drew a scroll from his breast, and held it before my eyes with firm fingers, watching me intently the while. It was like the scroll I had taken to Blanchelande within the other. It was the same scroll, or a cunning copy, for there lay two great hasty blots upon it in one corner, and its signature ran up the page like a ladder against a wall.
"Read here, and here," said he, "and understand how this cursed man would incite milder men to shed Duke William's blood!"
CHAPTER IV.
Of the coming of the Sarrasins in force, and of the building of their château. Of Brother Hugo's confidence in God, and how I rang the alarm-bell at St. Pierre Port.
Through that journey to Blanchelande I was able to give the first warning to the abbot, and Brother Hugo, our tête d'armée, of the presence of new pirates in the very midst of the isle, through the ugly sight I had seen on my way by what men called the château.
And, indeed, all looked grave at my account, and Hugo shook his head, and he and the abbot and Martin and Richard had long and anxious converse in the Castle, and already we were bid to move very many of our holy things that bedecked the Church, or were used in God's service, within the Castle wall, and the builders had set up among the ramparts long sheds of wood, wherein began to be stored all manner of com, brought in from all the granaries around.
For the abbot had received from St. Michael's Mount and other places on the Breton coast most portentous accounts of a gathering together of the pirates of the sea and marauders of the land, and that some devil's bond had been forged between them, and that the wildest and most daring of these villains of every race and land had elected as their chief captain one whom they named "the Grand Sarrasin," one born of that black race, the deadliest enemy of Christendom. Others called him "Le Grand Geoffroy" as though they would save him at least from the black stamp of Paynim birth; but for us he was ever the Grand Sarrasin, and still the Grand Sarrasin, cursed a hundred times a day by every tongue in our cloister and island.