And when the fire which Girolamo had lit had burned itself out, and the smoke had cleared away, the fierce wind fell and there came on a terrible storm of thunder and lightning; and when this was over the long delayed rains began to fall in torrents, filling the rivers and brooks and marshpools, and making the whole country once more impassable; and these rains, intermitting only for brief hours, continued to fall for seven days and seven nights; and that part of the causeway which had been built by Duke William’s orders was undermined and washed away, so that no trace remained of it. And then, while the Normans remained penned up in the castle and in the intrenched camp, the Lord of Brunn and his Saxons launched their light boats in the rivers and meres, and destroyed all the works which had been built to defend the whole road. Thus in the next year the Conqueror had everything to begin anew. In the meanwhile Ivo Taille-Bois gave up the command in despair, and went away to Stamford, where he had left his wife, the Ladie Lucia. During the winter this Vicomte of Spalding made an essay to recover possession of the Ladie Lucia’s manor-house and estates at Spalding; but as the Saxons had still a little fleet of barks and the entire command of the Welland river, Ivo failed entirely, and was not even able to do so much as disturb the tranquillity of the good Saxon monks of Crowland. And while the Norman vicomte was thus unsuccessful, other and great successes attended the Saxon lord. With one numerous band collected near his house at Brunn, the Lord Hereward found his way across the country as far as Newark, where he defeated a great body of Normans, and found good spoil; and after this, with another band, drawn mostly from the impenetrable bogs of Hoilandia, he ascended the Witham as far as Boston and there surprised and captured three Norman knights, and some three-score Norman men-at-arms. And it so chanced that among these three knights was that unlucky wooer Geoffroy, the brother of Ivo, who had found in some upland part of England a Saxon wife and heiress, but one neither so handsome nor so rich as the Ladie Alftrude, for it was a widow quite old enough to be Sir Geoffroy’s mother, and her whole estate was not much larger than one of the Ladie Alftrude’s farms. Having no money to pay for his ransom, and his brother having none to give or lend him, Geoffroy was sent into the fens and kept there as a close prisoner. And before the Lord of Brunn had done, he made other members of that family know what it was to live among the bulrushes. But now, having done all these things, and performed many other exploits, Hereward, at the approach of spring, brought his fair young spouse from Ely to his house at Brunn, and a very few days after her arrival the lady gave birth[208] to an heir to the united honours of Brunn and Ey. And hereupon followed high rejoicings, and a christening, and such an hospitable feast as only true Saxon lords knew how to give.