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Gilbert remained as one entranced he did not even hear the sharp scream that burst from Linda, as Bertha, with her hair streaming wildly over her face and neck, darted toward them through the corridor, followed by a dozen men-at-arms. "Fly! fly! my lady!" cried the terrified neif, setting the example. But Margaret remained firm. "Rise!" she said to Gilbert, who still knelt as if turned to stone.
It was she, for a certainty, who first taught me truly to play; for whereas my dolls, and men-at-arms and shop games, albeit they were small, were in all points like the true great ones, she had but a staff of wood wrapped round with a kerchief which she rocked in her arms for a babe; and when she played a shop game with the little ones, she marked stones and leaves to be their wares and their money, and so found far greater pastime than we when we played with figs and almonds and cloves out of little wooden chests and linen-cloth sacks, and weighed them with brass weights on little scales with a tongue and string.
Twice the besieged beat back the assailants, until Raymond perceiving at an angle of the wall the wooden props upon which a house rested, ordered them to be cut away, on which the house fell to the ground, and a breach was effected. The men-at-arms then burst in, slaughtering the inhabitants without mercy.
When they reached Chalons they heard much fuller particulars than had before reached them, and learned that the Duchess of Normandy, the Duchess of Orleans, and near three hundred ladies, had sought refuge in Meaux, and that they were there guarded but by a handful of men-at-arms under the Duke of Orleans, while great bands of serfs were pouring in from all parts of the country round, to massacre them.
He had raised an armed band, consisting of some Aragonese gentlemen and their servants, and with this he fell like a thunderbolt upon the Castilian men-at-arms and the familiars of the Inquisition. The alguazil fled, leaving me one leg free, the other burdened by the gyve, and as he fled so fled all others, being thus taken unawares.
Francois nodded and, bidding the men-at-arms, who had already returned, stable their horses and follow him, he proceeded to the walls. "This is enough to make one weep," Pierre said, as the oxen poured into the courtyard, and then through the archway that led to the countess's garden. "What is enough, Pierre?
"I doubt whether less than five thousand men-at-arms and archers would be able to show face to such an array as is said to be approaching, especially as there will be many archers among them who, although not to compare with those who fought at Poictiers, are yet capable of using their weapons with effect.
"Why, how makest thou all this?" demanded Richard Wood, contemptuously. "The king careth not whose hand delivereth the youth, so that he be delivered. That we have not already caught him is the fault of thyself alone. Hadst thou but held thy tongue, we had had with us to-night six men-at-arms, and had, erelong, run down the game.
Their leader appeared to be a young knight who, one would think, had scarcely won his spurs, or had but recently done so; and his retinue was limited to the customary attendance upon a single "lance," a dozen men-at-arms, completely equipped, and twice that number of light archers.
Even the closed vizors of the knights and chief men-at-arms did not avail to protect their wearers; the shafts pierced between the bars or penetrated the slits left open for sight, and many fell slain by the first volley.
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