"A moi, hommes d'armes!" shouted Thorold, as he used to shout whenever he
wanted to scourge his wretched English monks at Malmesbury into some
French fashion.
The men leaped up, and poured in, growling.
"Take me this monk, and kick him into the street for waking me with such
news."
"But, gracious lord, the outlaws will surely burn Peterborough; and folks
said that you were a mighty man of war"
"So I am; but if I were Roland, Oliver, and Turpin rolled into one, how am
I to fight Hereward and the Danes with forty men-at-arms? Answer me that,
thou dunder-headed English porker. Kick him out."
And Ywar was kicked into the cold, while Thorold raged up and down his
chamber in mantle and slippers, wringing his hands over the treasure of
the Golden Borough, snatched from his fingers just as he was closing them
upon it.
That night the monks of Peterborough prayed in the minster till the long
hours passed into the short. The poor corrodiers, and other servants of
the monastery, fled from the town outside into the Milton woods. The monks
prayed on inside till an hour after matin. When the first flush of the
summer's dawn began to show in the northeastern sky, they heard mingling
with their own chant another chant, which Peterborough had not heard since
it was Medehampstead, three hundred years ago,--the terrible
Yuch-hey-saa-saa-saa,--the war-song of the Vikings of the north.
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