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Then the knight made signs with his spear, and a little trebuchet behind the walls began dropping stones just clear of the wall into the moat, and at last they got the range, and a stone went clean through the roof of the cat, and made an ugly hole.
But I remember nothing of his face except that he had tears in his eyes when we said good-bye to him; at which I wondered a great deal, for I had never seen a man crying. When we were outside again in the street Maman Trebuchet took the gold away from us. I think she too must have received money: for from that day she neglected her marketing and drank more heavily than before.
We knew him as Maitre Antoine at first, and so he was generally called: but he told us that his real name was Antonio or Antoniu, as he spoke it and that he came from Italy. He took a great fancy to us and obtained leave of Maman Trebuchet to teach us the Scriptures: but what he really taught us was to speak with him in Italian.
The English let the French pass by, and then, manoeuvring for the weather gage, tacked and assailed them from behind. The fight raged round the great ship of Eustace, on which the chief French knights were embarked. Laden with stores, horses, and a ponderous trébuchet, it was too low in the water to manoeuvre or escape. Hubert easily laid his own vessel alongside it.
She found a seat upon it and motioned to me to come close, and I stood close, staring down on her while she stared down at her feet, grey with dust almost as the road itself. "We were children, Camillo and I," she said at length, "in keep of an ill woman we called Maman Trebuchet, and in a house near the entrance of a court leading off the Rue de la Madeleine and close beside the Market.
So day in, day out, Eric's chosen men plied trebuchet and balista, and Beltane, beholding the dire havoc wrought by heavy stone and whizzing javelin among the dense ranks of the besiegers despite their mantlets and stout palisades, grew sick at times and was fain to look otherwhere.
There he learnt that Hubert de Burgh at Dover had broken the truce, and he at once set off to renew the siege of the stronghold which had so continually baulked his plans. But little good came of his efforts, and the much-talked-of trébuchet proving powerless to effect a breach, Louis had to resign himself to a weary blockade.
We entered, and were led into the presence of a very noble-looking gentleman in a long yellow dressing-gown, who blessed us and gave us a kiss apiece, and some gold money, and afterwards poured out wine for Maman Trebuchet and thanked her for taking such good care of us." "That was your father, Princess." "I have often thought so.
The pavement where they sat and the street before it were strewn always with rotting odds and ends of vegetables, for almost every one in that quarter earned his living by the Market, and Maman Trebuchet among the rest. She divided her time between walking the streets with a basket and drinking the profits away in the cabarets, and in the intervals she cursed and beat us.
"Why then firstly, lord, firstly we have the great Mangon or mangonel, fundis fundibula, that some do also term catapultum, the which worketh by torsion and shall heave you great stones of the bigness of a man fully two hundred yards an it be dry weather; next is the Trebuchet, like to the mangon save that it swingeth by counterpoise; next cometh the Balista or Springald that worketh by tension a pretty weapon! and shall shoot you dart or javelin so strong as shall transpierce you six lusty fellows at a time, hauberk and shield, like so many fowl upon a spit very sweet to behold, brother!
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