Leaving, however, the Chroniclers’ views to themselves, let us look further at some of the facts which peep out in the narrative. Why, in the first place, we naturally ask, if the King was shot by accident, did his friends and attendants desert him? Why was he brought home in a cart, drawn by a wretched jade, the blood, not even staunched, flowing from the wound, clotting the dust on the road? Why, too, the indecent haste of his funeral? Why, afterwards, was no inquiry as to his death made? Why, too, was Tiril’s conduct not investigated? These questions are difficult to answer, except upon one supposition. Let us note, also, that they are all ecclesiastics, to whom the revelations of the King’s speedy end had been made known, and that their special favourite, Henry, succeeded to the throne in spite of his elder brother’s right. It is, certainly, too, something more than singular that when the banished Anselm should visit Hugh, Abbot of Cluny, that the Abbot should tell him that during the past night he had seen William summoned before God and sentenced to damnation, and that the King’s death immediately followed: that further, on the next day, when he went to Lyons, his chaplain should be twice told by a youth of the death of William before it took place.[128] More than singular, too, are those words of Fulchered, spoken so openly and so daringly, “The bow of God’s vengeance is bent against the wicked; and the arrow swift to wound is already drawn out of the quiver.”[129] Either all these persons were prophets, or accessories to the murder, or—for there is one more solution—the Chroniclers invented this portion of the story. If we admit this last supposition, we cannot receive the other parts of the narrative without the greatest suspicion. We have almost a sufficient warrant to read them in an exactly opposite sense to what they were intended to bear.