A stupor of fear had seized on all those who ruled. The lords and gentry had shut themselves up in their castles and houses, or ridden off out of the way of the wind. Doors were barred, bridges raised, shutters bolted. Reeves, clerks, tax-gatherers, hid themselves in cellars and hay-lofts. Women shivered and lay awake at night. The suddenness of the thing had astonished the gentles as though the brown earth were heaving under their feet. Knights who had fought in the French wars sat sullenly at home, too proud, perhaps, to risk the pride of the sword against the insolence of a smith’s hammer or a labourer’s flail. The ignoble many had risen against the arrogant few, and the arrogance was with the mob for the moment. It was a wild May, both in wind and temper. The hawthorn bloom was scattered like snow, and late frosts nipped even the young bracken. The north wind roared out of a hard blue sky, making the green world shiver, and bringing Berserk steel into the painted pleasance of spring. The mood of the hind suited the mood of the weather. The fields were empty, and the men who should have laboured there were running like madmen hither and thither. The cold spell out of the north seemed to have given a rougher edge to the boorish temper, making it remember the mud and rain in the winter fields, the sour food at home in the draughty clay-daubed cottage; while Master Gentleman sat in his stone house before the fire under the great chimney, and drank hot Spanish wines, and had furs to draw about him. The wolf spirit was abroad. These men of the fields were drunk with years of envy, hatred, and sullen anger; they raged through the country-side, plundering cellars and larders, tearing down the banks of fish ponds, breaking mill wheels, cutting down orchard trees, emptying granaries and dovecots, killing deer, and harrying warrens. Pride of birth was taken by the beard, mocked, and treated to the savage horse-play of these men of the soil. “When Adam delved and Eve span, Where was then the gentleman?” They howled these words in the villages, along the roads, and over the heaths and commons. The French Jacquerie seemed to have come again with its gibbering fury, its wild lust and blood spilling; and many a woman trembled for her honour, and many a gentleman dreamt of his bloody head dancing upon a pike. Father Merlin knew what he knew. The runners came to him carrying news, and one May morning he sought Isoult. She had taken herself to one of the empty forest lodges where two sheep and their lambs fed in the deserted orchard and a cow came to the byre gate to be milked. It was so cold that Isoult had brought in wood and kindled a fire, and Merlin found her in the dark, black oak hall, sitting on a stool, and staring at the flames. A loose shutter banged to and fro in the wind, and the twittering of the sparrows in the thatch sounded cold and thin.