"Burn the murderer! To Stortford, and burn him out!"
Gilbert looked up quickly, peering into the gloom whence the voice had
spoken. He did not see how, at the words, his mother started back from
the corpse, steadied herself with one hand, and fixed her eyes in the
same direction; but before he could answer, the cry was taken up by a
hundred throats.
"Burn the traitor! burn the murderer! To Stortford! Fagots! Fagots and
pitch!"
High, low, hoarse, clear, the words followed one another in savage
yells; and here and there among the rough men there were eyes that
gleamed in the dark like a dog's.
Then through the din came a rattling of bolts and a creaking of hinges,
as the grooms tore open the stable doors to bring out the horses and
saddle them for the raid; and one called for a light and another warned
men from his horse's heels. The Lady Goda was on her feet, her hands
stretched out imploringly to her son, turning to him instinctively and
for the first time, as to the head of the house. She spoke to him, too;
but he neither heard nor saw, for in his own heart a new horror had
possession, beside which what had gone before was as nothing. He
thought of Beatrix.
"Hold!" he cried. "Let no man stir, for no man shall pass out who would
burn Stortford. Sir Arnold de Curboil is the king's man, and the king
has the power in England; so that if we should burn down Stortford
Castle to-night, he would burn Stoke Manor to-morrow over my mother's
head. Between Arnold de Curboil and me there is death.
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