And while they travailed thus on the south side of the Isle of Ely under the watchful and severe eye of Duke William, other Normans and other Saxon serfs (poor slaves constrained to this unpalatable task) laboured in the north under the eyes of various chiefs who had been promised in fiefs all the lands which they should conquer. With such of the ships and barks of the fleet as were first ready, a host was sent up the Wash and up the fen waters as high as Wisbech; and these ships carried with them good store of timber and other materials, and, besides the soldiers, many good builders, who began forthwith to build a causeway and a castle at Wisbech.[209] Thus threatened on both faces of the Fen-country, Lord Hereward had much to do: but he flew from side to side as the occasion called for his presence; and, with the aid of Girolamo, that cunning man, and the willing and ready labour of the fen people, he speedily built up another castle, partly of wood and partly of earth and turves, to face the Norman’s castle at Wisbech, and to render their causeway there of none avail: and is not the ruin of this castle seen even in our day? And is it not called Castle Hereward? And do not the now happy and peaceful fenners relate how many assaults, and bickerings, and battles took place on the spot? When his own preparations were well advanced on the side of the river Cam, Duke William sent his half-brother Robert, whom he had made Earl of Moreton, to take more ships and men, and go from the river Thamesis to the Wash and the new castle at Wisbech, and there tarry quietly until the day next after the Festival of Saint John the Baptist, when he was to attack Castle Hereward with all his force, and press into the Isle of Ely from the north, while he, the Duke, should be preparing to invade the island from the south. But this Count Robert, being but a gross and dull-witted man, did not comprehend all the meaning of his orders, and because he reached Wisbech Castle sooner than had been expected, and got all ready to fight two days before Saint John’s Day, he needs must fall on at once. Now the Lord of Brunn, with one eye upon Count Robert and one upon Duke William, gathered great force to a head at Castle Hereward, beat the dull-witted man, slew with the edge of the sword or drove into the fens more than half his knights and men-at-arms, set the new castle at Wisbech in a blaze, and burned a good part of it, and was back at Ely and with the Saxon army in the great camp before Count Robert had recovered from his amaze, and long before Duke William could learn anything of the matter. And so it chanced that when, on the day next after Saint John’s Day, Duke William moved with his mighty host and machines of war from the castle at Cam-Bridge towards the Camp of Refuge, in the full belief that the attention of the Saxons would be all distracted, and that Hereward, their great leader, would be away on the shores of the Wash and hotly