Judge ye the wrath of that terrible false French abbat when he came to the house at Peterborough, and heard and likewise saw all that had been done! First he pulled at his own hair, and next he snatched at the prior’s head and tore his hair away by handfuls. He would not believe one jot of the tale that was told him about Hereward’s forcible entry and seizures; he would believe nothing but that they were all in league with the rebels and robbers of the fens, even as they had been when Abbat Brand blessed the sword of Hereward and made him knight, and took into his house a garrison of armed Saxons. The more they protested and vowed, the more he disbelieved them; and this first conference between these untrue Saxon monks and their choleric Norman abbat ended in Torauld’s shouting, “Come hither, my men-at-arms, and fustigate these liars!” And while the men-at-arms beat the commoner monks and the lay-brothers of the house, Torauld himself tweaked the noses of the superiors with his gauntleted hand, and drawing his heavy sword, he applied the flat of it to the prior, the sacrist, the chamberlain, the refectorarius, and all the rest of the officials, beating them all even as he used to belabour his monks and novices in Normandie. But the true English members of the house did not share in this pain and humiliation, for the sub-sacrist and every one of them that was a good Saxon had gone off with Lord Hereward more than an hour before. When he grew tired of this his first hard lesson in ecclesiastical discipline, Torauld caused the prior and the sacrist and every monk that had stayed behind, to be thrown into the dungeon of the house, and there he kept them two days and two nights without food and drink. Some few of the new Lord Abbat of Peterborough’s men-at-arms thought, that instead of fustigating the English monks, they ought to have followed Hereward and the English soldiers, and have made an effort to recover the good things they had carried off; but Torauld, who was bold only where there was no chance of resistance, would not venture a pursuit after an alert and most daring enemy into a difficult country; and so he swore to his people that the Saxon robbers must have been gone, not one, but more than three hours before his arrival; that instead of counting sixty men, they were six hundred strong at the very least. Whether they were sixty or six hundred, none of the men-at-arms who knew anything concerning the fenny country were at all eager for the pursuit, albeit they all imagined that the treasure which Lord Hereward had carried off with him from the abbey was great enough to pay for a king’s ransom. Thus the new Norman Abbat and his unpriestly and ungodly men entered upon possession of the ancient abbey of Peterborough: but feast that day was there none. CHAPTER XVII. HEREWARD GOES TO BRUNN, AND IS DISTURBED THERE.