Nor did the darkness hide the violence and the horror, for the very furniture was thrown out into the street and piled up amid the faggots to help the bonfires that lit the sport of war. Women and children fled like frightened birds into the darkness, and were thrice blessed if they were not caught, and held. The gaudy queans who had followed the army played King of the Castle on the high altar of the church, pulling each other down by the skirts, shouting, and tumbling over one another on the steps. Drunken men burst in the door of the bell tower, and set all the bells clanging in huge discords. Others caught the monks, and made them race naked round the cloisters, whipping them with their girdles to make them nimble. Gaillard and some of his fellows had come by a cask of wine, and Gaillard had Black Isoult, Marpasse’s comrade, under his arm, and was well content with the lady. They needed a house for a night’s revel, and chose one in the main street, a stone house that joined a forge. Gaillard’s men broke down the door, while their captain held a torch, and Isoult sat on the wine cask, laughing. When the door gave way they were met in the dark entry by a virago with a hatchet, none other than Bridget, the smith’s wife, who had stormed against Denise. The men fell back from her, but Isoult showed herself more valiant, and quite a match for the lady. “Make way, Gammer Goodbody,” she said, “make way for the red gown.” Bridget answered her with an oath, and a word that was too familiar to Isoult’s ears. The little woman’s black eyes sparkled with spite. “Here is a respectable slut,” she said, “who has not learnt to kiss the foot of a lady.” And she cut Bridget across the forearm with her knife, so that the smith’s wife dropped her hatchet. Gaillard sent his men in, and they overpowered the woman. But Isoult would not let them harm her. Her own spirit of wickedness was equal to taming the big shrew. She made them cut off Bridget’s hair, dress her in some of her man’s clothes, tie a lamb’s skin under her chin, and truss her with her hands fastened to her ankles. Then while she drank wine with Gaillard and made merry, seated on a bench, her red gown the colour of freshly shed blood, she had Bridget rolled across the floor and propped up near her like a sick duck. Isoult made a mock of the smith’s wife that night because of the thing she had called her, asking her where her marriage lines were, and why her man had not come home. Sometimes she threw the dregs from her ale horn into Bridget’s face, and called her a she-goat and a rabbit. Bridget still had the courage to curse back again, though her tongue was less clever than Isoult’s. But when Isoult took a burning stick from the fire, and began to singe Dame Bridget’s stockings, the woman took to screaming, and pleaded for pity. So Dom Silvius let the devil loose in Battle, and the memory of that night lingered for many a long day.