"
And Ivo Taillebois kept his word; and without difficulty, for he had many
to help him. To drive the English to desperation, and get a pretext for
seizing their lands, was the game which the Normans played, and but too
well.
As he rode out of Spalding town, a man was being hanged on the gallows
there permanently provided.
That was so common a sight, that Ivo would not have stopped, had not a
priest, who was comforting the criminal, ran forward, and almost thrown
himself under the horse's feet.
"Mercy, good my Lord, in the name of God and all his saints!"
Ivo went to ride on.
"Mercy!" and he laid hands on Ivo's bridle. "If he took a few pike out of
your mere, remember that the mere was his, and his father's before him;
and do not send a sorely tempted soul out of the world for a paltry pike."
"And where am I to get fish for Lent, Sir Priest, if every rascal nets my
waters, because his father did so before him? Take your hand off my
bridle, or, par le splendeur Dex" (Ivo thought it fine to use King
William's favorite oath), "I will hew it off!"
The priest looked at him, with something of honest English fierceness in
his eyes, and dropping the bridle, muttered to himself in Latin: "The
bloodthirsty and deceitful man shall not live out half his days.
Nevertheless my trust shall be in Thee, O Lord!"
"What art muttering, beast? Go home to thy wife" (wife was by no means the
word which Ivo used) "and make the most of her, before I rout out thee and
thy fellow-canons, and put in good monks from Normandy in the place of
your drunken English swine.
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