Chapter 30

During the interval of quiet which followed the first success of the besiegers, while the one party was preparing to pursue their advantage, and the other to strengthen their means of defence, the Templar and De Bracy held brief council together in the hall of the castle.

“Where is Front-de-Bœuf?” said the latter, who had superintended the defence of the fortress on the other side; “men say he hath been slain.”

“He lives,” said the Templar coolly, “lives as yet; but had he worn the bull’s head of which he bears the name, and ten plates of iron to fence it withal, he must have gone down before yonder fatal axe. Yet a few hours, and Front-de-Bœuf is with his fathers—a powerful limb lopped off Prince John’s enterprise.”

“And a brave addition to the kingdom of Satan,” said De Bracy; “this comes of reviling saints and angels, and ordering images of holy things and holy men to be flung down on the heads of these rascaille yeomen.”

“Go to—thou art a fool,” said the Templar; “thy superstition is upon a level with Front-de-Bœuf’s want of faith; neither of you can render a reason for your belief or unbelief.”

“Benedicite, Sir Templar,” replied De Bracy, “I pray you to keep better rule with your tongue when I am the theme of it. By the Mother of Heaven, I am a better Christian man than thou and thy fellowship; for the bruit goeth shrewdly out, that the most holy Order of the Temple of Zion nurseth not a few heretics within its bosom, and that Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert is of the number.”

“Care not thou for such reports,” said the Templar; “but let us think of making good the castle.—How fought these villain yeomen on thy side?”

“Like fiends incarnate,” said De Bracy. “They swarmed close up to the walls, headed, as I think, by the knave who won the prize at the archery, for I knew his horn and baldric. And this is old Fitzurse’s boasted policy, encouraging these malapert knaves to rebel against us! Had I not been armed in proof, the villain had marked me down seven times with as little remorse as if I had been a buck in season. He told every rivet on my armour with a cloth-yard shaft, that rapped against my ribs with as little compunction as if my bones had been of iron.—But that I wore a shirt of Spanish mail under my plate-coat, I had been fairly sped.”

“But you maintained your post?” said the Templar. “We lost the outwork on our part.”

“That is a shrewd loss,” said De Bracy; “the knaves will find cover there to assault the castle more closely, and may, if not well watched, gain some unguarded corner of a tower, or some forgotten window, and so break in upon us. Our numbers are too few for the defence of every point, and the men complain that they can nowhere show themselves, but they are the mark for as many arrows as a parish-butt on a holyday even. Front-de-Bœuf is dying too, so we shall receive no more aid from his bull’s head and brutal strength. How think you, Sir Brian, were we not better make a virtue of necessity, and compound with the rogues by delivering up our prisoners?”

“How?” exclaimed the Templar; “deliver up our prisoners, and stand an object alike of ridicule and execration, as the doughty warriors who dared by a night-attack to possess themselves of the persons of a party of defenceless travellers, yet could not make good a strong castle against a vagabond troop of outlaws, led by swineherds, jesters, and the very refuse of mankind?—Shame on thy counsel, Maurice de Bracy!—The ruins of this castle shall bury both my body and my shame, ere I consent to such base and dishonourable composition.”