The evening of the same day while she was at work in her garden, two of Aymery’s villeins came out of the wood, each carrying a bundle of ash stakes and an axe¹, for they had heard that the saint’s fence was as flat in places as the walls of Jericho. The two men, Oswald and Peter, were a little shy of Denise, as though the Goldspur conscience had accused the community of neglecting the Red Saint. They told her that the cattle had broken out from the pen, and strayed far and wide through the woods. It had taken them days to recover the beasts, and they had been hampered² by the knowledge that the men of Pevensey were still sweeping³ the hundreds of the rape⁴.

 

Both of the men knew that Aymery was a prisoner at Pevensey, but they did not know that he had been taken at the very doorway⁵ of the Red Saint’s cell. Nor did Denise betray to them all that had passed; she had too much pride and a sacred sense of secrecy⁶ for that. Oswald and Peter set to work, their axes catching⁷ the sunlight that sifted⁸ through the trees, white chips flying, their brown faces intent and stolid⁹. Denise stood and watched them for a time, and Oswald, the elder of the two, told her what had befallen Father Grimbald. A swineherd had found him half dead in the woods, and had hidden him in a saw-pit for fear of Gaillard and his men. It had been a sharp escape, and a sharp sickness for Grimbald. He was still in hiding, and being healed of his wounds, and there was not a woman in the whole hundred who would not have had her tongue cut out rather than betray Grimbald to Peter of Savoy.

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