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But I miss here what king and knight hold as the salt of the feast and the perfume to the wine: the lay of the minstrel. Beshrew me, but both Saxon and Norman are of kindred stock, and love to hear in hall and bower the deeds of their northern fathers. Crave I therefore from your gleemen, or harpers, some song of the olden time!"
But when appetite was satisfied, then began the buzz of conversation to arise, then the gleemen tuned their harps to sing the praises of Norman warriors; nor did the toasts linger, nor was the drinking of many healths absent.
If the king makes me any further grant of land it will be doubtless properly made out, and I can get a clerk or a monk to read it to me. My steward will keep the tallies of the tenants' payments. I can learn the history of our forefathers as well from the songs and tales of the gleemen as from books." "You are as bad as my man Osgod," Wulf said indignantly.
At the words of their gleemen we thrill again to their wild love of freedom and the open sea; we grow tender at their love of home, and patriotic at their deathless loyalty to their chief, whom they chose for themselves and hoisted on their shields in symbol of his leadership.
On the morrow he would attend the king to Lewes with fifty lances, where he trusted to justify the favour and honour which he had received. Shall we once more go over the old story, and tell of the songs of the gleemen, the music of the harpers, of wine and wassail, of healths and acclaims, which made the roof, the oaken roof, ring again and again?
I never knew a man easy while the gleemen sang his deeds, save Ina, who was used to it, and never listened; and I knew not where to look, though maybe more than half the folk present did not understand that I was the hero of the song.
The gleemen tuned their harps, and I and my comrade lit our torches from those already burning on the wall, and stood ready, for the king was coming.
Then the gleemen struck up a merrier song, a sweet and tender lay of a Christian knight who fell into the power of "a Paynim sultan," and whom the sultan's daughter delivered at the risk of her life all for love. How she followed him from clime to clime, only remembering the Christian name. How she found him at last in his English home, and was united to him, after being baptized, in holy wedlock.
Citizens' wives in hood and wimple were there, shrilly bargaining for provision for their households, squires and grooms in quest of hay for their masters' stables, purveyors seeking food for the garrison, lay brethren and sisters for their convents, and withal, the usual margin of begging friars, wandering gleemen, jugglers and pedlars, though in no great numbers, as this was only a Wednesday market-day, not a fair.
The minstrels and gleemen were not wanting here, but none could touch the harp more sweetly than Edmund himself; and, the banquet over, he sang an ancient lay, which kindled the enthusiasm of all his hearers, and nerved them to do or die, so that they longed for the morrow.
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