Chapter 17

When those of the royalists who had not deserted the King and fled precipitately toward the coast had regained the castle and the Priory, the city was turned over to looting and rapine. In this, Norman of Torn and his men did not participate, but camped a little apart from the town until daybreak the following morning, when they started east, toward Dover.

They marched until late the following evening, passing some twenty miles out of their way to visit a certain royalist stronghold. The troops stationed there had fled, having been appraised some few hours earlier, by fugitives, of the defeat of Henry’s army at Lewes.

Norman of Torn searched the castle for the one he sought, but, finding it entirely deserted, continued his eastward march. Some few miles farther on, he overtook a party of deserting royalist soldiery, and from them he easily, by dint of threats, elicited the information he desired: the direction taken by the refugees from the deserted castle, their number, and as close a description of the party as the soldiers could give.

Again he was forced to change the direction of his march, this time heading northward into Kent. It was dark before he reached his destination, and saw before him the familiar outlines of the castle of Roger de Leybourn. This time, the outlaw threw his fierce horde completely around the embattled pile before he advanced with a score of sturdy ruffians to reconnoiter.

Making sure that the drawbridge was raised, and that he could not hope for stealthy entrance there, he crept silently to the rear of the great building and there, among the bushes, his men searched for the ladder that Norman of Torn had seen the knavish servant of My Lady Claudia unearth, that the outlaw might visit the Earl of Buckingham, unannounced.

Presently they found it, and it was the work of but a moment to raise it to the sill of the low window, so that soon the twenty stood beside their chief within the walls of Leybourn.

Noiselessly, they moved through the halls and corridors of the castle until a maid, bearing a great pasty from the kitchen, turned a sudden corner and bumped full into the Outlaw of Torn. With a shriek that might have been heard at Lewes, she dropped the dish upon the stone floor and, turning, ran, still shrieking at the top of her lungs, straight for the great dining hall.

So close behind her came the little band of outlaws that scarce had the guests arisen in consternation from the table at the shrill cries of the girl than Norman of Torn burst through the great door with twenty drawn swords at his back.

The hall was filled with knights and gentlewomen and house servants and men-at-arms. Fifty swords flashed from fifty scabbards as the men of the party saw the hostile appearance of their visitors, but before a blow could be struck, Norman of Torn, grasping his sword in his right hand, raised his left aloft in a gesture for silence.

“Hold!” he cried, and, turning directly to Roger de Leybourn, “I have no quarrel with thee, My Lord, but again I come for a guest within thy halls. Methinks thou hast as bad taste in whom thou entertains as didst thy fair lady.”

“Who be ye, that thus rudely breaks in upon the peace of my castle, and makes bold to insult my guests?” demanded Roger de Leybourn.

“Who be I! If you wait, you shall see my mark upon the forehead of yon grinning baboon,” replied the outlaw, pointing a mailed finger at one who had been seated close to De Leybourn.

All eyes turned in the direction that the rigid finger of the outlaw indicated, and there indeed was a fearful apparition of a man. With livid face he stood, leaning for support against the table; his craven knees wabbling beneath his fat carcass; while his lips were drawn apart against his yellow teeth in a horrid grimace of awful fear.

“If you recognize me not, Sir Roger,” said Norman of Torn, drily, “it is evident that your honored guest hath a better memory.”

At last the fear-struck man found his tongue, and, though his eyes never left the menacing figure of the grim, iron-clad outlaw, he addressed the master of Leybourn; shrieking in a high, awe-emasculated falsetto:

“Seize him! Kill him! Set your men upon him! Do you wish to live another moment, draw and defend yourselves for he be the Devil of Torn, and there be a great price upon his head.

“Oh, save me, save me! for he has come to kill me,” he ended in a pitiful wail.

The Devil of Torn! How that name froze the hearts of the assembled guests.

The Devil of Torn! Slowly the men standing there at the board of Sir Roger de Leybourn grasped the full purport of that awful name.

Tense silence for a moment held the room in the stillness of a sepulchre, and then a woman shrieked, and fell prone across the table. She had seen the mark of the Devil of Torn upon the dead brow of her mate.

And then Roger de Leybourn spoke:

“Norman of Torn, but once before have you entered within the walls of Leybourn, and then you did, in the service of another, a great service for the house of Leybourn; and you stayed the night, an honored guest. But a moment since, you said that you had no quarrel with me. Then why be you here? Speak! Shall it be as a friend or an enemy that the master of Leybourn greets Norman of Torn; shall it be with outstretched hand or naked sword?”