It was at this juncture of time that two pretended pilgrims and devotees of Saint Etheldreda arrived at the guest-house of Ely, giving out that they had with great risk and real danger found their way through the lines of the beleaguering Normans, but that, so entire was their devotion to the saint, no perils could prevent them from coming to the shrine. It was not much noted at the time, but it was well remembered afterwards, and when it was all too late, that these two palmers spent much more of their time in walking and talking outside the abbey walls with the prior and the chamberlain, than in the praying inside the church and in the chapel of the saint: that they seemed to shun the Lord Abbat, and that they took their departure in a sudden manner, and without taking leave of the Abbat as good pilgrims were wont to do. And almost immediately after the departure of the two false palmers, a proclamation was made by sound of trumpet and by Duke William’s orders, that the Abbat of Ely, having leagued himself with a sorcerer (having long before leagued himself with traitors and rebels and robbers), had incurred the anathemas of the church, which would soon be pronounced upon him by bell, book, and candle,[217] and with all the formalities in use. And after this had been proclaimed by sound of trumpet in the Camp, and at the cross of the town of Cam-Bridge, and at the crosses of Peterborough, Huntingdon, Stamford, and many other towns, the cloister-monks most adverse to the Lord Abbat began to throw off all secrecy and disguise, and to talk as loud as trumpets both in the streets of Ely and in the monastery, calling Girolamo a sorcerer and worse. Upon this the dark Salernitan came up from the Camp to the monastery, and demanded to be heard in the church or in the hall, in the presence of the whole house. Thurstan, with right good will, assented; and although some of the monks tried to oppose it, Girolamo was admitted to plead his own defence and justification in the great hall. It was the envious prior’s doing, but the novices and all the younger monks were shut out, for the prior feared greatly the effect of the speech of the Salernitan, who by this time had made himself master of the Saxon tongue, while in the Latin tongue and in Latin quotations, Girolamo had few equals on this side the Alps. He presented himself alone, having forcibly and successfully opposed the Lord Hereward, who would fain have accompanied him to the abbey. “If you should be with me,” he had said to the Lord of Brunn, “they will impute it to me, in case of my effacing these vile stigmas, that I have been saved by your favour and interference, or by the respect and awe which is due to you, or by the dread they entertain of your arms; and should I fail in my defence, they might afterwards work you great mischief by representing you as mine advocate. No! good my Lord, alone will I stand upon my defence, and bring down confusion upon these calumniators!”